I’ve read my 1st book for the 100-book challenge!

Title: Of Two Minds

Author: Carol Matas and Perry Nodelman

Pages: 200

What I Thought: It was a pretty quick read, and it took me about an hour or so.  I haven’t read it since 6th grade, so I was long overdue for a re-read.  Princess Lenora has the ability to make her imagination come to life, while Prince Coren has the ability to read minds.  For Lenora, the laws (not to mention her parents) prevent her from imagining things to reality; everyone can read Coren’s mind, which means his thoughts are rarely kept to himself.  The premise of the story is that Coren and Lenora are to be married, but during the wedding ceremony, Lenora imagines herself in a completely different world, and Coren is taken with her.  Together, they have to defeat Hevak, who’s an evil tyrant that can make people disappear.  Not have groups of people just disappeared, people have forgetten about them.  With Coren’s ability to read people’s minds, he can look for groups of people that have been made to disappear by Hevak (trolls, fairies and elves), and combined with Lenora’s ability to make them real, they are able to defeat Hevak. 

There were a few things that were interesting.  One, Hevak was trying to create a perfect world with no misfits.  I honestly have no idea if this was the authors intent (since the book is aimed at kids), but it did remind of me of Hitler.  Two, it turned out that Hevak was Lenora’s imagination!  Throughout the book (but mostly at the beginning), it was obvious that Lenora didn’t like the fact that no one used their ability, and all lived in the same boring world.  Hevak definitely was there to show Lenora what can happen when you mess with the balance of things.

Rating: On a scale of 1 to 5, I’d give it a 3.  It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t terrible either.  Just average.