Argh. A pet peeve of mine cropped up in this book. Two actually. One is the reason I just can't bring myself to read A Series of Unfortunate Events even though I think the film is actually quite good and an underrated family classic. The other is why I find marking kids' books such hard work at times.
But I'll come to them later.
Cirque du Freak is a book I've seen bandied around as a good class reader so as I'm embarking on spending money on new texts, it seems I should actually read some before I commit. This is reasonably short and seems popular enough (there's certainly enough sequels) so I haven't ruled it out just yet, despite the pet peeves. It does come with some reservations though.
So Pet Peeve No.1: Darren Shan is not the author's actual name. It's his pen name. And he tries to pretend he's writing his own story. That is, Darren Shan is the main character in the novel. I have no idea why this bugs me so much; I think it's just crossing that invisible line between truth and fiction, breaking the fourth wall, if you will, and it gets right up my nose.
Anyway, Darren and his friend Steve go to the Cirque du Freak (freak show/circus for those who can't work out basic French) and then it all goes quite odd. Up until then, it was actually quite a good read. Even after that, there was an enjoyment in the novel, even if there was a horrendously large spider in it and it all became quite dark towards the end. I think children would enjoy it. However, I'm not sure if it's not just too dark and strange; I can see that this would give some more sensitive kids nightmares and I'm just not willing to do that. I'm going to hand it onto a colleague and see what their verdict is.
Oh, plus Pet Peeve No.2 sort of puts me off: 'Darren Shan' full on overuses exclamation marks. It's completely unnecessary and frankly exhausting to read. When my students do it, it drives me nuts, as exclamation marks are for a purpose and to create a particular effect. If you use them all the time, it just suggests you have no idea how to actually use punctuation. And here we have a published author doing just that, and suggesting it's okay. I'm not sure I can put this in front of my students and maintain any sense of integrity.
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