{"id":412,"date":"2008-04-08T23:21:50","date_gmt":"2008-04-09T03:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=412"},"modified":"2008-08-06T00:10:44","modified_gmt":"2008-08-06T04:10:44","slug":"of-birds-and-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=412","title":{"rendered":"Of Birds and Flowers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Linnets and Valerians<\/em> by Elizabeth Goudge<br \/>\nGrade: B+<\/p>\n<p>Elizabeth Goudge wrote <em>The Little White Horse<\/em>, a magical book that has long been a favorite of mine (and J.K. Rowling&#8217;s), so when <em>Linnets and Valerians<\/em>, came back into print, I had to get a copy of it. Did it meet my high expectations? Not quite.<\/p>\n<p><em>Linnets and Valerians<\/em> is about a four children who are left in the care of their grandmother while their father, a military man, heads off to Egypt. The children hate living with their grandmother, so they run away and end up at their uncle&#8217;s house. He agrees to be their guardian and teacher. The children amuse themselves by exploring their new neighborhood, getting into all sorts of places they&#8217;re not supposed to be, and in the process they solve a couple of mysteries and help bring about some positive changes.<\/p>\n<p><em>Linnets and Valerians<\/em> is a lovely book, well written and quite readable, but the answers to its mysteries were too obvious and its magic degenerated into witchcraft. It just wasn&#8217;t as good as <em>The Little White Horse<\/em>, so it was a disappointment for me, but it came so close to being great that I still recommend it for avid fans of children&#8217;s books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge Grade: B+ Elizabeth Goudge wrote The Little White Horse, a magical book that has long been a favorite of mine (and J.K. Rowling&#8217;s), so when Linnets and Valerians, came back into print, I had &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=412\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}