Tome Time discussion

Read to the end of chapter 8 by 30/05/20.

Leave your insights and comments below.

So, um, is Ursula a flea or a worm? And is the 'worming her way into the family' too obvious a metaphor?

Worming her way into the family, lol! 🤣

I’m wondering if there is something different about the boy too, as we are 122 pages in and we don’t know his name, and he has to read books to know how to do human things...and his only friend is a girl who can make a field glow. I am suspicious.

The mind controlled drowning scene was a little creeptastic. I really want to call fictional child services for the kid...and what was in that meatloaf? I feel like Gaiman may have watched The Faculty before writing this one.

Fantastic prose - loving this book so far, and was really hoping the new kitten was a somehow reincarnated Fluffy. 🐱💕

I can't quite make up my mind whether all the supernatural stuff is actually happening, or whether it is all just in the mind of a kid who has spent a lot of time reading books.

I'm not sure if it's that he has to read books to know how to do human things, so much as that he has spent a lot of time reading books and not much interacting with people, so that's where he's learned stuff from. He seems to have read a lot of the same books I'd read at his age but then Gaiman probably knows his audience that way ;-)

Of course, what a kid might come to think about the world if they get everything entirely from books might explain the main character. I spent a good bit of yesterday reading to my 2 year old flatmate and thinking that she's going to be in for disappointment when she realises that libraries are not staffed by giraffes*, and flying doctors don't travel by dragon or treat unicorns that turn into bicorns.

*this is definitely a flaw in the reality in which we find ourselves.

Whatever the book is you are reading to your tiny flatmate sounds amazing. Library giraffes and unicorns? I’d read the heck out of an adult version of that.

To be fair, he could just be living in a really abusive household under the constant threat of death, and as you mentioned, books are his only escape...maybe he never even left his little room and has just gone a bit wonky. My copy has a sticker on the front of the book saying this book is part of Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime. Not sure I would want to read this right before bed, as I’d be dreaming of flattened kittens and a creepy worm-lady.

To be fair, I'm taking bits of two different books - the unicorn turns up in a book about a dragon, a knight and a princess who are flying doctors, while the giraffe librarian is in a book about a sulky panda called pom-pom.

I might be in love with the fact that there is now a sulky panda called Pom-Pom 😂