Thumbnail Reviews*: Elemental Woman, The Girl Who Stayed Awake

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Title: Elemental Woman
Author: Ron Miller
Genre: Art book
Price: ?
Publisher: Lulu
ISBN: N/A
Point of Sale: ?
Rating: 7/10

Either Lulu's search engine has become even more opaque, or this book is no longer on sale. It is, or rather was, a 150-page book includhing a large number of illustrations based on photographs of the female form.  Each picture is highly decorative, but to my eye they don't quite evoke the deeper theme of  "the feminine core of art, science, literature and mythology." I also found the almost exclusive use of a single female model made the works start to feel repetitive by the end.  Like most art books I lived with Elemental Woman rather than forming an immediate impression.  Overall I found it to be a pleasing and accomplished work of fantasy art, but not one for the keeper shelf.



Title: The Girl Who Stayed Awake
Author: Karen Rosario

Genre: Children's Fiction

Price: $6.48, free download

Publisher: Lulu

ISBN: N/A

Point of Sale: Lulu

Rating: 5/10

The Girl Who Stayed Awake is a very interesting and whimsical children's book about a girl who has a series of dream. There is an underlying story of accepting the wonder of dreams as ephemeral and always secondary to real life.  However the unique style of this book is not quite enough to overcome a pervasive lack of refinement.  The rhymed text seem overly long and has a very uneven meter.  The pictures are charming a their best but are uneven and sometimes only muddily reproduced in the grey scale interior.

* Thumbnail reviews are provided for bought copies only, donated review copies receive full reviews.