N. K. Stouffer
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- Nancy Stouffer
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- female
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- USA
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- Mechanicsburg, PA
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Larry Potter and His Best Friend Lilly von N. K. Stouffer
This is the absolute best book that I have ever read. The plot line, rhyme scheme, and moral of the story is staggeringly deep and emotional. Honestly, it doesn't matter that this is a children's book, colleges should be studying this. It all starts with a boy Larry Potter. Like his magical counterpart, he needs to get glasses. Unlike J.K Rowling's ridiculous story of witchcraft and Satan worship, the story instills good Christian values in your young readers. After this book is over, I suggest contacting your local Baptist church to conduct a bible study so you can discuss how you can use this text to draw closer to your savior. I give this book a perfect 5/5, and you can bet that the creator of the universe seconds my opinion.… (mehr)
The Legend of Rah and the Muggles
by N.K. Stouffer
Thurman House, 267 pages plus 12 pages colour illustrations,
hardback, 2001; reissue of a book originally published in 1984
By all rights, this review should be littered with instances
of the letters "TM" in superscript, just as is the front cover of
The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, for Nancy Stouffer is
the author who has created minor shockwaves in the book trade by
pointing out that the name "Muggles", used by J.K. Rowling in her
Harry Potter series, was previously used by Stouffer, who
is also the author of a pre-existing series of books for the very
young based on the character Larry Potter. Moreover, Stouffer's
illustrations of Larry Potter bear a very considerable
resemblance to the depictions of Harry Potter on the covers of
the Rowling books. The response of the book trade to Stouffer's
objections, in the USA at least, has been a courageous unofficial
boycott of Stouffer's books and a stolid silence on the whole
matter: nothing must threaten the Harry Potter cash-cow.
Leaving the Larry/Harry Potter dispute aside, the Muggles of
this book bear no resemblance beyond the name to Rowling's.
Instead, they are the mutant descendants — bald, huge-
headed, small, childish — of the people left behind in the
island nation of Aura, many generations ago, when the wealthy
deserted it and them in the wake of a nuclear war. Since that
time Aura has been covered with a purple haze through which
sunlight can barely trickle but moonlight, paradoxically, can
pass undimmed.
All this changes with the arrival on the shore of Aura of two
baby twin brothers aboard a makeshift raft; they were cast adrift
by their mother, as per Superman by his parents during the
destruction of the planet Krypton, when she saw that her own
country was plunging into an all-destroying war. Aboard the raft
along with the twins is a magical illuminating stone, which
brings sunlight back to Aura.
The two brothers, Rah and Zyn, are nurtured by the Muggles.
Although identical in every respect to begin with, their
personalities come to differ radically: Rah grows up good and
wise while Zyn grows up nasty and spiteful. The dispute between
them is chronicled in the Muggles' ongoing Ancient Book of
Tales, upon whose account the current volume is purportedly
based.
Illustrated with a central clutch of Stouffer's own rather
jolly colour illustrations, The Legend of Rah and the
Muggles is a much shorter book than the page-count above
might suggest: the type is extremely large and the page margins
likewise. It is also a very badly published book; clearly
Thurman House does not believe in quaint customs like editing,
copy-editing and proofreading (I liked the idea of a bright star
"shinning" in the sky, and especially approved of the term
"dinning room"). The text reads as if it's a somewhat inaccurate
transcript of an oral presentation, complete with shifts of tense
(between past and present) and countless typographical and
grammatical errors — a few spelling errors, too.
Furthermore, this being a fantasy for young children, someone
should have pointed out to Stouffer the meaning of the word
"bugger", which she uses frequently and clearly regards as
innocuous.
Delivered as an oral presentation for children, this tale,
which comes complete with songs (the music for one of which is
supplied at the back), would one imagines be tremendous fun; it
is easy to envisage a youthful audience falling around with
laughter at some of the jokes, for example, while the ramshackle
nature of the plot wouldn't be evident — or, at least, it
wouldn't be important — in a spoken, necessarily episodic
telling. As a printed novel the text doesn't work nearly so well;
most of the jokes just referred to fall flat when rendered in
type. In their place are moments of humour that are certainly not
deliberate, such as the Monty Pythonesque legend drawn from
The Ancient Book of Tales about The Year of the Rabbits:
And so it was that the rabbits with protruding teeth lost
their gentleness and ravaged the continent. . . .
Likewise, some of the early scenes, set in the castle where
the noble Lady Catherine decides the only hope for her twin
babies is to consign them to the mercy of the seas aboard a raft,
smack considerably of Daisy Ashford's The Young Visitors
(1919). Lady Catherine, although heartbroken over the death of
her beloved husband Sir Geophrey (sic), nevertheless
immediately starts flirting audaciously with her butler, with a
strong suggestion that onstage flirting is likely to be matched
by offstage naughtiness Real Soon Now, if it hasn't started
already:
"Sir, there is no woman in this room that wouldn't trade
dance partners with me right now; I'm not about to give them the
chance. If that makes me wicked — so be it!" she said with a
poor attempt at a Shakespearean delivery, and they both laughed.
Stouffer has not fully realized her fantasy world. Aside from
the curiosity, already mentioned, of moonlight being able to
penetrate where sunlight cannot, there are items such as the
Muggles managing to grow fruit and vegetables in a sunless land.
In the same context, the traditional Muggle songs make reference
to such events as dawn, which the Muggles could not have
experienced before the arrival of the twins; also mentioned in a
song is the "star that's shinning bright", even though the very
existence of stars, brightly shinning or otherwise, must be
unknown to the Muggles. There are countless other such lapses.
Nevertheless, Stouffer's achievement in conceiving the
fantasy shouldn't be underestimated. Although The Legend of
Rah and the Muggles doesn't bear up well in any comparison
with Tove Jansson's Moomins series, of which it is in some
ways reminiscent, it has its excellent moments. I was much taken,
for example, with the Greeblies, creatures amply worthy of
inclusion — and this is high praise indeed! — in the
ecology of Rene Laloux's animated movie Fantastic Planet
(La planŠte sauvage, 1973):
Greeblies are fat ratlike rodents that live in Sticky Icky
Swamp and often hide beneath boulders. They are nocturnal little
pests with faces that resemble rabbits', and their large round
ears curl slightly forward at the top. Their bodies are covered
with gray coarse hair with black tips that look like they were
dipped in ink.
Greeblies have short legs, but they can jump five feet in the
air from a sitting position. Their long, coiled tails are used to
quickly grab and snatch anything of interest to them, before
being seen.
They have been known to grab hold of Muggle legs from behind
and drag them frantically for yards and yards, before letting
them go. Most often their goal is to steal food or raid the
garbage.
Only two things frighten Greeblies: sand dogs called Nardles,
and getting caught in a trap set by the Muggles — who would
more than likely use them as dinner for their pet Nardles.
Nardles live in burrows along the shoreline, and Greeblies
won't go near them. Even though the Greeblies are difficult to
see, the Nardles can smell them a mile away.
It is at times like this, when Stouffer's imagination just
suddenly lifts off the ground and carries her to who knows where,
that The Legend of Rah and the Muggles is at its best.
Given a thorough edit, this book could be much recommended; as it
stands, however, the best that can be said is that The Legend
of Rah and the Muggles is worth picking up primarily for its
curiosity value and, of course, for its occasional delicious
flights of fancy.
This review, first published by Infinity Plus, is
excerpted from my ebook Warm Words and Otherwise: A Blizzard
of Book Reviews, to be published on September 19 by Infinity
Plus Ebooks.
… (mehr)
OK, I admit it! I have no one but myself to blame for the tragic waste of five minutes that reading this book entailed. What can I say...? I was passing a bargain-book cart, and the names "Larry Potter" and "Lilly" caught my eye. Realizing that the author, N.K. Stouffer, was none other than the woman who tried to sue J.K. Rowling for plagiarism (Stouffer also wrote a children's fantasy novel entitled The Legend of Rah and the Muggles), I just had to pick this up, and see what it was all about. It was only 50 cents, after all!
I should have resisted. There truly aren't words to describe how awful Larry Potter and His Best Friend Lilly - the rhyming tale of a young boy who withdraws from his friends when he finds out that he must get glasses, afraid that he will be ridiculed - is, from both a narrative and illustrative standpoint. The garishly cartoonlike illustrations are painful enough, but the text! Well, take a gander yourself: "Larry Potter is a friend of Lilly's / He has beautiful, big brown eyes, / But Larry is now very sad, / And Lilly wonders why. / Lilly tries her very best, / But Larry just won't join the rest. / She brings him flowers... wouldn't you? / And a box of candy... maybe two!"
I'm sorry to say it only gets worse from there. I think I want a refund!… (mehr)
I should have resisted. There truly aren't words to describe how awful Larry Potter and His Best Friend Lilly - the rhyming tale of a young boy who withdraws from his friends when he finds out that he must get glasses, afraid that he will be ridiculed - is, from both a narrative and illustrative standpoint. The garishly cartoonlike illustrations are painful enough, but the text! Well, take a gander yourself: "Larry Potter is a friend of Lilly's / He has beautiful, big brown eyes, / But Larry is now very sad, / And Lilly wonders why. / Lilly tries her very best, / But Larry just won't join the rest. / She brings him flowers... wouldn't you? / And a box of candy... maybe two!"
I'm sorry to say it only gets worse from there. I think I want a refund!… (mehr)
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