Spirited Away (2001) Summary: When a young girl is trapped in a strange new world of spirits, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free herself and rescue her parents. The mysteries of what this place is, who is responsible, and how to escape all fall on Chihiro’s 10-year-old shoulders. …
My Neighbor Totoro (1988) Summary: Two young girls, 10-year-old Satsuki and her 4-year-old sister Mei, move into a house in the country with their father to be closer to their hospitalized mother. Satsuki and Mei discover that their rented home may be haunted and magical creatures inhabit the nearby forest. Adventures and rescues abound while …
Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) Summary: A young woman named Sophie is cursed by the Witch of the Waste and is turned into an old woman who is unable to tell anyone of her plight. Unable to continue her job at her mother’s hat shop, she goes to the ambulatory castle of the notorious wizard Howl …
Porco Rosso (1992) Summary: Slouching towards middle age, Porco Rosso makes his living by flying about in his red bi-plane and fighting sky bandits who prey on cruise ships sailing the Adriatic. When he’s not engaging in dog fights, this pilot lives on a deserted island retreat. Porco was once a strapping young man, but …
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) Summary: This film tells the story of Nausicaä, Princess of the Kingdom of The Valley of the Wind from a time after a climatic war. This period, known as the Seven Days of Fire, has destroyed modern human civilization. The survivors have regressed to a variation of …
Yearbook | Seth Rogan Summary: This memoir is not a ‘tell-all’, but perhaps a tell-much. Seth Rogan began professional joke writing as a kid and his stand-up experience is exactly the way we remember him sounding and speaking from film. His relaxed and casual style isn’t too far from the truth. He does make one …
The Final Girl Support Group | Grady Hendrix Summary: There’s a trope commonly used in horror movies, specifically those fitting the slasher genre, called the ‘final girl’. This is an unassuming main character that eventually triumphs over her attacker, most likely causing their death. What if the final girl character became so common, they collected …
I thought I was pulling together a selection of works not at all alike each other… but no, I really do like my adventure stories with moral or ethical consequences. Read The Count of Monte Cristo aloud – the language is musical. Island of the Blue Dolphins might need note taking or drawings of the …
Each of the following suggestions is an inventive and original concept with lots of running, hiding, seeking, fighting, and sometimes a little magic. Every Day in particular starts a series with amazing implications for our understanding of time and consciousness. -Cinda The City of Bones | Cassandra Clare Summary: Suddenly able to see demons and …
Remembering my favorite go-to books of childhood, I was fortunate to have a lot of reading time when visiting my grandparents who had amazing ‘old’ collections of work I’d never heard of. They loved providing animal stories like Riki-Tiki-Tavi and the following. I was well acquainted with the Disney movies of these first two before …