Patty Pick for March 19th is "The Ocean at The End of the Lane" by NeilGaiman

This little book had a lot to say in a small amount of pages. All though fantasy is not always my first choice, I read this book because I had heard a lot of good things about it. Our narrator, now a middle-aged man, revisits his hometown to attend a funeral. He decides to travel down the lane in the neighborhood in which he lived growing up. As he drives down the lane, he begins to remember the events that took place in the summer he met Lettie Hempstock and her family at the end of the lane.

Neil Gaiman uses his rich storytelling imagery to open our imaginations up to the fantasy world he creates in our narrator's world. As Neil Gaiman weaves his tale of the summer that Ursula Monkton, monster, took over the life of the our narrator, we start to get afraid for him. Ursula is evil incarnate and we watch her use our young narrator's family for her own gains and to destroy the world as they know. it. Our young hero turns 7 and learns that he can be braver than he imagined. As you get lost in vivid descriptions of the story you will realize that the "monsters" and "events" relate to real life situations. Our narrator had to overcome being nerdy and shunned by this fellow students to come to the realization that he could stand up to the bad things that happened to him and control his own future.