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Riordan's "Red Pyramid" Rivals "Percy Jackson" |
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By Mason Kelly, Special to SantaCruzWire.com
SANTA CRUZ (July 2010) - After the blockbuster hit movie and extremely popular book series, “Percy Jackson and the Olympians,” author Rick Riordan was hard pressed to write another book anywhere near as good as his previous series. A lot of people thought it couldn’t be done. Well, if you were one of those people, think again, because Rick Riordan’s newest release, “The Red Pyramid” is already starting to look like an enormous hit.
Riordan's newest heroes, siblings Carter and Sadie Kane, make humorous, enjoyable main characters in the first book of the series, “The Kane Chronicles.” Carter and Sadie argue and fight and argue some more. They are a perfect brother and sister.
One of the unique things about the book is that it is written in first person, with the main characters alternately telling the story. They act like they are talking into a tape recorder, the microphone seems to switch between the two of them.
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Music, Drama and Birthday Cake: Cabrillo Celebrates Chopin, Schumann |
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Written by Tara Leonard
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APTOS (May, 2010) - Susan Bruckner, Head of the Piano Department at Cabrillo College, is throwing a birthday party and music lovers of all ages are invited. There will be cake and the playing of “Happy Birthday” just like at other celebrations. But the gift for attendees will be six hours of live performances of the music of Chopin and Schumann. After all, it’s not every year that two of the world's most famous Romantic composers celebrate their second century.
The 200th Birthday Marathon will take place on Monday, May 24, at Cabrillo’s new Recital Hall from noon to 6 p.m. More than 70 performers will play instrumental and vocal solos, duets and chamber works. Plus Cabrillo College theater students will read from the letters and diaries of Robert Schumann and his beloved wife Clara.
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Add Your Two Cents On SantaCruzWire.com |
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SANTA CRUZ (March 2010) - We’ve added a new service to SantaCruzWire.com – software that allows visitors to comment immediately about stories on our site, and to exchange views with other readers.
Thank you for checking out this new application, and please excuse our mess over the next few weeks as we work out some of the kinks in the system.
We hope this new feature will encourage readers to participate in and expand our ongoing discussion of community issues. We’re looking forward to having more of the amazing conversations we now enjoy with our readers when we meet them at the store, on campus and downtown.
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Practice Makes Perfect: Music Students Shine at Certificate of Merit Exam |
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Written by Tara Leonard
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SANTA CRUZ (March, 2010) - Eleven-year-old Isabel Corser sat at the upright piano, her blond hair still wet from swim practice, her bare right foot working the damper pedal as she played a lulling rendition of Sparkling Waters by Martha Sherrill Kelsey. Finishing with a confident flourish she said, “That piece is flowing, so it makes me think of a river moving. But my other one is completely different.” Turning back to the keyboard, she launched into a bouncy, happy Little Joke by Kabalevsky. “That one is more staccato,” she explained. “If you were walking, staccato would mean you pick up your feet quickly.”
Corser, along with more than 29,000 music students across
California, is practicing for the annual Certificate of Merit music
exam. For over 70 years CM, as students call it, has been sponsored by
the Music Teachers Association of California (MTAC),
a statewide network of professional music teachers. Here in Santa Cruz
County, the exam takes place on Sunday, March 21.
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The Secret Series - Alchemy, Murder and Snarky Laughs For Pre-Teens (and Their Parents) |
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Written by Maria Gaura
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SANTA CRUZ ( January 2010) – The title of the first book in the Secret Series is … well … a secret. So is the identity of the author, the town where the story takes place, and even the names of the heroes.
The first page of book one warns readers to go no further, and hints at the dire consequences of doing so. But the warnings are so overblown, the writing so funny, and the artwork so off-kilter, that you keep laughing and turning pages, despite the prickle of unease creeping up the back of your neck.
The Secret Series, now three books and counting, may not appeal to young children. But it is precisely on-target for the skeptical pre-teen reader who pounces on inconsistency, delivers dead-on parodies of television infomercials, and can sniff out adult hypocrisy at twenty paces. That is to say, most middle schoolers will love these books.
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The Future of Community Websites (And Why You Should Care) |
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Written by Tara Leonard
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SANTA CRUZ (December, 2009) - What is the role of community websites in the ever-changing media world? Is the internet killing journalism or creating a new, more inclusive method of information sharing? And what the heck is an “aggregator”? These are just a few of the questions participants pondered last week at a conference called “Entrepreneurship and the Community Web” sponsored by The University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Maria Gaura and I, co-founders of Santa Cruz Wire, joined the creators of fifteen other local or hyper-local websites based in California to discuss the financial, legal and editorial challenges of managing a community based, on-line news source. We were both fascinated and frustrated by what we heard. Because this topic has lasting implications for how news and information will be delivered in the future, we want to share our impressions with SC Wire readers.
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The Mysterious Benedict Society - Paranoid Tales for Exceptional Children |
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Written by Maria Gaura
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SANTA CRUZ (November 2009) - The bestselling Mysterious Benedict Society series opens with a newspaper solicitation: “gifted children” are sought to participate in a special test. The test is not what it seems, however, and the “winners” – four misfit kids - are sucked into a dangerous and frightening quest.
The stage is set for an ominous adventure story that serves up some seriously paranoid subject matter.
The plot of this three-volume series, aimed at children ages ten and up, revolves around subliminal mind control, ineffective and corrupt authorities, cult-like brainwashing camps for children, and other staples of the tin-hat conspiracy crowd. But this anxious tale is not simply Kafka for Kids. The bleakness is leavened with transforming friendship, and the triumph of clever children outsmarting the adult world.
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Percy Jackson, Coming of Age As a Demigod |
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Written by Maria Gaura
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SANTA CRUZ (September 2009) - Boys in literature have always struggled to come of age, enter the ranks of men, and claim their place in the world. But the stakes are ever higher for modern literary heroes.
Harry Potter had to save the world from the powers of dark magic while going through puberty.
And Percy Jackson, hero of the excellent series Percy Jackson & The Olympians, must overcome dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and preserve all of Western Civilization. It’s a tall order for a hapless 12-year-old, and a wild, five-volume ride for the rest of us.
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Not Too Late to Get Shipwrecked with Shakespeare Santa Cruz |
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Written by Tara Leonard
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SANTA CRUZ (August 2009) - Saturday night I took the family to see Shipwrecked! An Entertainment - The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told By Himself) at Shakespeare Santa Cruz on the UCSC campus. What a fabulous show to match its fabulous title! Tickets are still available for the remaining performances of this rollicking, family-friendly adventure and I strongly encourage you to go. Who knows? It might just inspire you to embark on daring exploits of your own.
This is old-fashioned showmanship at its very best, helmed by the utterly convincing Dierk Torsek as our narrator, Louis de Rougemont. “Hello, you vital hummingbird-hearted creatures!” he boldly greets the audience. “Hello and welcome to this temple of imagination!” From that moment on, the audience is swept up in a head-long rush of heroic exploits from pearl-diving in the Coral Sea and surviving a gigantic octopus to living with Australian aborigines and riding giant sea turtles for fun.
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"House of Night" - Vampire Tale Aims Below the Belt |
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Written by Maria Gaura
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SANTA CRUZ (July 2009) - Book agents have been hunting vampires for the past few years, inspired by the “Twilight” series of young adult books, and its millions of fans. Young readers are lusting for bloody tales of the supernatural, and publishers are racing to put more vampire books on the shelves, quickly, before this terrible thirst fades.
The industry’s mad scramble to cash in on a trend has produced a raft of “Twilight” lookalikes, including the wretched and popular “House of Night” series, written by mother-daughter team P.C. and Kristin Cast. Where “Twilight” coyly titillates, “House of Night” aims straight for the crotch with scenes portraying oral sex, masturbation during a dark ritual, and the orgasmic pleasures of drinking blood.
Is it too late to issue a spoiler alert for this review?
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Written by Peggy Townsend
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SANTA CRUZ (May 2009) -- Jill Wolfson used to sit in the bleachers and imagine all the things that could go wrong as her gymnast daughter spun and flipped on the uneven parallel bars. She imagined her daughter’s hands letting go, the crashing fall to the ground. She imagined broken bones and concussions and even death.
It was those horrible parental imaginings that Santa Cruz writer Wolfson turned to as she sat down to write her third young-adult novel, “Cold Hands, Warm Heart,” which takes on the subject of illness, loss and connection through the story of a young girl’s heart transplant – a book one reader called “the ‘Juno’ of organ transplants.”
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Munching with Mozart: Free Noon Concerts Make Classical Music Deliciously Easy |
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Written by Tara Leonard
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SANTA CRUZ (April 2009) -- It’s 12:15 on a recent Thursday and the Main Branch of the Santa Cruz Public Library is anything but quiet. In an upstairs meeting room, pianist John Orlando flies through the lightning fast runs of a Mozart sonata for close to a hundred appreciative listeners, many of whom are discretely lunching on sandwiches or salads. These lucky music lovers are attending Munching with Mozart and Friends, a series of free noontime concerts offered the third Thursday of every month.
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Kate, What Were You Thinking With Bride Wars?! |
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Written by Tara Leonard
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SANTA CRUZ (February 6, 2009) -- Dear Kate Hudson, Congratulations! I hear that you served as both co-producer and actress in the new comedy Bride Wars. It’s always great to see a woman taking on the male-dominated Hollywood culture. Which is why, on behalf of women and mothers everywhere, I have to ask, what the #%@^ were you thinking with this misogynistic mess?!
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s 2009 not 1959. Getting married is not the single most important life goal of my eleven-year-old daughter or her friends. Unlike your young protagonists, they don’t dance around the attic playing wedding nor do they dream of spending their life savings on a pretentious, over-the-top reception. They’re too busy planning for the day when they’ll play soccer in the Olympics, manage their own businesses, or run for president. Seating arrangements are not high on their current to-do lists.
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'Lark and Termite' author writes of secrets, love and memory |
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By Peggy Townsend
SANTA CRUZ (January 2009) -- Jayne Anne Phillips’ new novel “Lark and Termite” began 25 years ago in an alley in West Virginia.
Phillips was visiting a friend when she looked out a second-story window into an alley below and spotted a boy sitting in a 1950s aluminum lawn chair. The boy was holding a strip of blue dry cleaner bag in front of his face and blowing on it so the plastic twirled and moved in front of his eyes. Her friend told Phillips the boy would sit like that for hours.
The image burned into Phillips’ memory and became the impetus for one of the central characters in her latest book -- a boy named Termite who can neither speak nor walk but is attuned to the world in ways that go beyond normal consciousness.
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Sit! Stay! Don't Go See Marley & Me! |
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Written by Tara Leonard
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SANTA CRUZ (January, 2009) -- The number one movie in America masquerades as a cheerful doggie romp to lure unsuspecting viewers into the theater. Don’t be fooled. On a rainy winter afternoon, I thought a light-hearted comedy would entertain my multigenerational holiday visitors. After suffering through the overly long film, my children renamed it The Doggie Death Watch. Take a stand against misleading Hollywood marketing and just say no to this dog.
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Sorry, Parents - "Twilight" Is No "Harry Potter" |
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By Maria Gaura
SANTA CRUZ, Ca. (Dec. 4, 2008) - Harry Potter appeared on the literary scene a decade ago, and transformed the bookselling world with a flick of his wand. Ever since, the muggle publishing industry has been frantic to produce another fantasy franchise that appeals to kids, adults and movie executives alike.
Enter the Twilight books, a four-volume series about teenage vampires and werewolves, set in the gloomy woods of the Pacific Northwest.
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