Odder Than Ever

The quality of the stories in Odder Than Ever is superb. By turns, I found the stories to be witty, scary, intelligent, moving and silly. I especially liked "The Stinky Princess" - a charming, silly love story concerning an atypical princess. "There's Nothing Under the Bed" is a frightening story about a boy's struggle to be believed. True to the book's title, "The Giant's Tooth" is a very odd chronicle of life in a giant's mouth. The story "Am I Blue" does go into controversial waters but in my reading of the story, it does so in a safe and interesting manner. "The Metamorphosis of Justin Jones" and "I, Earthling" are coming of age tales of responsibility and insight beyond one's own concerns. I don't normally read YA books but I have been so pleasantly surprised by Bruce Coville's ability to write on a number of levels for both children and adults that I picked up a couple of his other books. I also heartily recommend Jennifer Murdley's Toad.

Odder Than Ever, By Bruce Coville Short stories 4 out of five star ratting In The Golden Sail, a boy named Jan's father left in search of a boat from stories with a golden sail, after he saw the sail out at sea one day. Shortly after that his mom dies, and his father never comes back. In hope that's his father would come back Jan goes to the shore every day for years to see if his father comes back. A net maker named Samos is blind and always tries to get Jan to stop looking when suddenly one day a ship starts to come towards them and doesn't stop some thing made Jan and the net maker walk towards the ship and they get on and before they know it the ship takes off at a very fast pace they search the ship and no one is aboard. The ship is moving it's self they are stuck on this ship for days when the ship suddenly lands at an island and they get off the ship turns into a coin which they keep they start to walk through a jungle and they find a golden palace. They went into the palace and found Jan's dad, who is stuck and an tries to free his father but he can't so Jan's dad asks him to take over his lord ship of the golden people and Jan refuses then he set off to do what he wants on the boat with a golden sail. In biscuits of glory a boy is scarred of his house cause his family was robbed when they lived in their old house. So ever sense then he has been vary scared of his house, and it's weird noises like the dripping of the faucet and the creaking of a floorboard when some one walks. So one night he wakes up at mid night and takes a baseball bat with him to the kitchen where he thinks he can hear someone. When he gets to the kitchen he astonished to see a ghost making biscuits and singing biscuits of glory (hence the title) and she is singing in a very sad voice. When the boy asks what is wrong she tells the sorry of how she died and how she can reach heaven and I will not reveal that to you for you'll have to find out your self. I gave the book a four out of five star rating because it was a fast reader and it had a lot of variety. That is for people that like tones of genera of books. After all this is a collection of short stories. So who knows what you'll find. But I also didn't like this book that much cause nothing really bad ever happened. End.

this is one of my very very favorite books of all time and i have read over thousands for sure. The stories in this book range from funny to dark to moving to breathtakingly beatiful. One thing they all have in common is that they are entertaining and some of them i am sure you will never forget. This is truly a wonderful collection of stories. from a funny love story about a goblin and a princess and a heartbreakingly bittersweet story of a boy who gains wings and a very hard choice, everthing in this book is original and wonderfully written. I highly reccomend this to anyone.

If you've ever read anything by Bruce Coville, and thought it was cool, well by all means, BUY THIS BOOK! I'm serious. Some of the stories have appeared in the anthologies(Like "Biscuts of Glory"), but it's worth it to have this book too, trust me.