Books: The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

This is a cute book. The narrator has a strong and engaging voice and is charming if not always likable.

The story in a nutshell: It is the 1700s. Henry "Monty" Montague—known rake and heir to an earldom—and his best friend Percy Newton are off on their Grand Tour. Monty's younger sister Felicity is along for the ride as they're meant to drop her at finishing school in Marseilles. Of course, everything goes awry when Monty steals a little something from the Duke of Bourbon during a visit to Versailles.

The novel attacks a number of issues, including race relations (Percy is part black), and health (Percy also has epilepsy), and abuse (Monty's father beats him), as well as homosexuality (Monty has a huge crush on Percy). It also glances over gender issues as Felicity protests having to go to finishing school because she'd rather become a surgeon.

Overall, it was a swift read up until the last 20-25% of the book. At that point, I felt the book had begun to suffer from a surfeit of plot. Things just kept happening, and I was beginning to be exhausted, not in a good way. But I plowed through (sometimes tempted to skim) to see how it would end.

Still, the book is largely a fine marriage of character and plot. If you like Lestat, you'll probably like Monty's narration. Many nice descriptions, though they sometimes get rather thick.

The main characters being teenagers, it's listed as YA, but if you're thinking of this for your teen, be sure they're ready for some of the heftier issues.

Movies: The Pirates! Band of Misfits!

Voices By: Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Imelda Staunton, David Tennant
Directed By: Peter Lord, Jeff Newitt
Written By: Gideon Defoe
Sony, 2012
PG; 88 min
3.75 stars (out of 5)
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Well, my seven-year-old can identify Martin Freeman at one hundred paces, and in animated form to boot ("That's the guy who's going to be Bilbo! It even looks like him a little bit!"). Hmm.

In short, a cute movie that I probably enjoyed more than my children, their chief pleasure seeming to be that I was amused. They didn't at all understand the bit about eating endangered species, but became very excited over Ham Nite (because they all like ham). Also, my two youngest couldn't read the signs Mr Bobo held, and my oldest couldn't read them quite fast enough, so I spent a lot of the movie translating. (I would have tried to explain that Queen Victoria wasn't quite the villainess the movie suggested her to be but decided that was a rabbit hole I wasn't willing to start down.)

Still, in all a win. My kids like Wallace & Gromit and find the stop-animation/claymation style visually interesting. It was probably more their lack of pirate knowledge that worked against this film on the whole. But none of it was very scary, which was good for the little ones, and there were still just enough tense moments to keep my oldest engaged. I don't know that I'd bother to add it to our DVD library or anything, but The Pirates! is a safe bet for, say, something to watch in the car or on a plane. At home the kids might not care to sit through it again—they'd likely go find something else to do—but when captive, as it were, they'd willingly watch it once more.