The Candy Shop War (Brandon Mull)

Why I have this book: I bought it for my son's birthday.

Okay, so... I didn't love this book and I didn't hate it, either. The story is fun... I can see 10-year-olds loving it. I guess I thought it was almost too much... too many things going on, too many details. Sometimes I was excited to see what would happen next, and sometimes I wondered when this book would ever end.

One thing that caught my attention (and made me a bit perplexed) was the author's tendency to throw in a description of race... such as "the ice cream man handed the cone to a black kid". (Those might not be the exact words, but it was along those lines.) It was like he was trying to be PC by having different races in the story, but when he did, they had nothing to do with the story. I didn't get that. It was actually kind of distracting to me. (Note: no mention was made of the main characters' races, except when they morphed and their features became those that would typically belong to another race.)

I wonder if all the studying I've done over the last two years about transracial adoption made me more aware of this... or would I have noticed anyway?

Anyway, I'll keep this book because I can see that children would find it exciting and fun.

Clean, although there is some "magic"-type violence and death of a bad guy or two.