I'm in a bit of a daze after finishing this book. At a book signing, I told Ms. Horvath that I was a huge fan of The Canning Season and asked which of her books she would recommend. Without hesitation, she said The Trolls.

I have a problem with the story of the Fat Little Mean Girl. Even the chapter title is unkind to fat people! If I were reading the book to children, I might leave this chapter out, or just leave out the word fat, though it gets a bit more complicated than that in one or two places. The chapter also involves Wiccans, but does not portray them in a very attractive way and I wouldn't mind reading that part to kids, despite my Christian faith. (It doesn't portray them as Satan-worshippers either, but plausibly, as fairly ordinary eccentrics, one of whom is mean.) If I gave the book to a child, I would talk to them about calling people fat and about Wiccans. For Sally’s stories so transfix her nieces and nephew that they’d rather listen to her than watch TV. They’re the stories of growing up on Vancouver Island in the late sixties and early seventies that their father has never told them. The tales are full of witty observations, sometimes uproariously funny, but there lurks an undercurrent of darkness. Pee Wee is too young to notice, but his sisters do, and are drawn to it even as they dread it…

A bigger insight is that "some acts alter everything forever" - in a quite sad story (involving trolls) which gives us a clue why her brother, the children's father, has almost no relationship with her. I won't give away too much from here on out, but there are some spoilers. I would say the following observations may help you enjoy the book a bit better. The week before Mr. and Mrs. Anderson were to leave Tenderly, Ohio, for the somewhat more bustling metropolis of Paris, their babysitter…came down with a minor case of bubonic plague and called tearfully to say she didn’t want to spread the buboes around. It starts when Melissa, Amanda, and Pee Wee's usual babysitter "came down with a mild case of bubonic plague and called tearfully to say she didn't want to spread the buboes around." So her parents (who are going to Paris for a week) are forced to call on Aunt Sally, whom they have never met and their father never talks about. When Aunt Sally arrives she is a surprise to the kids. Tall, wearing very high heels with chunky soles and laces that wound up her legs. She had a lot of yellow hair that was piled high on the top of her head, sparkly eyes and long dangle earrings.

Throughout the story, Aunt Sally will tell the children different stories about their relatives. Once Frank/Pee Wee the youngest goes to bed she also starts to tell the older girls a story about the trolls. She claims not to tell Frank this story because it will be too scary for him and he'll have nightmares and as a child I never questioned this explanation, yet as I reread this story it seems as if Aunt Sally is telling the girls this story as a lesson, as a warning of sorts to them, so they don't follow in the same vein as she did in the story. Politics and Religion: Louis accuses a local pastor of leaving four consecutive wives for the trolls. Melissa, Amanda and Pee Wee's parents are going to Paris and the babysitter is ill, so Dad calls on his sister Sally to come stay with the kids.

Trolls Band Together Little Golden Book

I'm not sure how I feel about this book, which I just found on our shelf, having no idea when or how we acquired it. I'm perhaps rating it a bit high, but I did enjoy it. It's quite funny in parts, quirky thoughout, and full of food for thought. So they’re quite unprepared for the charismatic and whimsical figure that arrives, with her towering blonde beehive of hair, her fondness for green beans and surprise meat loaf, her talent for drawing, and most of all her storytelling abilities. There's nothing about the plot here - because, being honest, there's hardly anything you could really call a plot. Trolls on a rescue mission, but in the end it's just colorful, loud with a lot of music, singing and dancing, with music that wanders through the pop culture of the last 50 years and yet makes it its own in a completely new way.