Flidderbugs and Doodling - Blog Tour

With two young kids of my own I am always on the lookout for books that I think are interesting to the younger crowd - these two caught my eye immediately, and I am pleasantly surprised with just how much I liked them!

About the Books:

Doodling
Genre: Comic Fantasy

Neville Lansdowne fell off the world.

Actually, he did not so much fall off as let go. The world had been moving so quickly lately and Neville was finding it almost impossible to keep up.

Doodling is an engaging comic fantasy which relates the events that befall Neville after he finds himself abandoned by the world and adrift in the middle of an asteroid field. Douglas Adams meets Lewis Carroll (with just a touch of Gulliver's Travels) as Neville wanders through his new home, meeting a variety of eccentric characters and experiencing some most unexpected adventures.


Flidderbugs

Genre: Satire/Fable/Fantasy

As Kriffle the Flidderbug investigates why his fellow 'bugs find it impossible to agree on the pressing issue of how many points there are on the leaves of the tree on which they live, he finds that the truth is more complicated, and ultimately more terrifying, than he ever could have imagined.

Flidderbugs is a political satire, a modern fable, or maybe just a funny little story about a bunch of insects with some very peculiar obsessions.


About the Author:

Jonathan Gould is a Melbourne-based writer and doodler.

He calls his stories "dag-lit" because they're the sort of stories that don't easily fit into the standard genres. Some might think of them as comic fantasies, or modern fairy tales for the young and the young-at-heart.

Over the years, his writing has been compared to Douglas Adams, Monty Python, A.A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, the Goons and even Enid Blyton (in a good way).

My Thoughts:

I can't decide wholeheartedly how I feel about these books - one the one hand they are entertaining, and on the other they are a break away from the regular fairy tales that we are used to.  I did like them, I just wondered if they were books I would describe as CAN'T MISS?

I do admit that it takes a creative mind to think outside the box as Gould has...he certainly stepped outside the "norm" with these books and that is a great thing.  I appreciate his candid honesty regarding their lack of a specific genre and I would agree that they fall into their own category!

I liked Doodling the best of the two, because of its easy to follow storyline and its characters.  Flidderbugs is charming though, and I think these two books ought to come as a set - it almost feels like you must read one to read the other and it's not because they are of the same storyline, it is because this author's writing style beckons you to read something else.  It is unique, and he clearly thinks outside the box, which I appreciate.

I like these...give them a try and see how they fit in your reading world!