If you haven't read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, go do it. Then go watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) and its predecessor, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971). This book talks about the making of the first movie--- from its inception (the director's daughter read the book three times and told him to make a movie of it) to its filming (the chocolate river was neither easy nor pleasant to create) to the film's life past its original release (it wasn't until 30 years after its release that the five children were able to watch the movie together for the first time).

Seeing Gene Wilder on the cover, standing on the Chocolate Room set, not only made me hungry but also made me want to read this book. While it gives a good deal of interesting bits of trivia about the making of the movie, especially in its pre-production stage, it glazes over a lot of the interesting bits of trivia that happened during the filming process itself. The book could have been much deeper and more satisfying, but the stories it did tell were quite enjoyable, and I would recommend this book.

The first installment of the Children of the Lamp series, we meet a pair of young twins, John and Phillipa, who live a comfortable life in New York City with their beautiful mother, wealthy father, and their abnormally intelligent Rottweilers, Alan and Neil. But strange things begin to happen to them once their wisdom teeth are removed... John's acne clears up; their housekeeper mysteriously wins the lottery; they find themselves sharing the same dreams. They discover that they are djinn, the wish-granters of legend, and that they must learn to harness their powers much more quickly than had been expected. The sealed location of seventy magical djinn, belonging to the ancient pharaoh Akhenaten, is about to be uncovered, and it's a race against time to secure them to the side of good before evil djinn get ahold of them...

Humorous and fast-paced, the Akhenaten Adventure is a fun, quick, and enjoyable read. The location is always changing--- their adventures take them from New York to Britain, from Cairo to Russia to the Arctic Circle. The Djinn world is well-thought-out and imaginative, and I look forward to the next two volumes in this series.