Darkness Becomes Her by Kelly Keaton

When Ari goes searching for her mother it leads her to New 2, the city formally known as New Orleans, now a washed out shadow of itself after two hurricanes devastated the area.  There she finds all manner of people and she begins to learn about the curse that has taken the life of her mother and so many before her.

I'd just killed a man - my fingers flexed on the hilt of the blade - with a goddamn miniature sword.
Family time with the Sandersons never covered this.  p.22

The good: New Orleans, baby!  It was fun reading a book and knowing all the places the author was describing.  From Covington and Mandeville (where my in-laws live) to the drive across the Causeway to the Garden District and the French Quarter, I know it all and I love it in a book.  Especially a book about New Orleans basically existing outside of the United States and being truly its own place. The atmosphere was just right for a book about paranormal creatures because what better place than New Orleans.  Ari is a pretty kickass character though she jumps to conclusions too quickly and is always ready to just leave when she doesn't like how things are going.  Sebastian too is pretty awesome and definitely a worthy boy for Ari.  I think Violet, a mysterious little girl, might be my favorite character.  Something about her intrigues me.

The bad: My problem with this book is that it reads like an adult writer writing a young adult book.  While I'm not opposed to language in a book (I rarely mention it in a review) this cursing felt forced in places.  Some of the characters who used curse words just seemed wrong saying them.  It was odd.  And I felt like it pulled me out of the book and made me contemplate whether or not such a character would really say that. I also felt like the author just threw every supernatural or paranormal creature at the book hoping something would stick. I was initially disappointed by the reveal of the main antagonist and who Ari turns out to be.  It just felt random.  But I can see it working too so maybe I withhold judgement on that point.

Throw Me Something, Mister! Happy Mardi Gras!

I know most people don't celebrate the great holiday of Mardi Gras, but it is a big deal down here in Louisiana.  I'm not sure what we are doing on the actual day itself, but we are going the Friday before to my father-in-law's parade and then we will try to hit the little parade that rolls through our little town on Saturday.

Little Pierre

Jacket: 
Little Pierre may be small, but he's got more marbles rolling round in his itty-bitty noggin than his four big, lazy brothers heaped together. Yet they just call him runt and ignore him. Course, when the good-for-nothing brothers flub their attempt to rescue a damsel in distress from the Swamp Ogre, it falls on Little Pierre to rescue them. Will this half-pint hero find out that his brothers were right all along--brains don't beat brawn?
Robert D. San Souci and David Catrow, the creators of the acclaimed Cinderella Skeleton, serve up a Cajun-spiced Tom Thumb tale straight from the Louisiana bayou.

While I don't usually review picture books, I just loved this one.  It is a Cajun version of Tom Thumb which is one of the reasons I had to have it for my boy.  I'm from Louisiana and live in the heart of Cajun country, if you didn't know, and so I like to get books that are from here or about here.  And also I love David Catrow's illustrations.  He has illustrated some of my other favorite picture books, including Take Me Out of the Bathtub.  Robert D. San Souci is the author and he does a pretty good job of  getting the language right although I don't know if people who have never heard a real Cajun accent will get it right.  I have a hard time with it and I'm from here!  But you have to be a real Cajun and have grown up with it to understand it.  Anyway, this was a very cute take on the Tom Thumb tale though I do wonder why it wasn't called T-Pierre instead of Little Pierre (if something is,like a boy, is small they are often called T, like T-boy means little boy).  Maybe to appeal to a wider audience?  I don't know.  But I was glad to have added this to the little man's book collection.