New Book Alert: The Unseen Blossom by Zlaikha Y. Samad and L’mere Younossi; Beautiful Magical Allegorical Modern Fairy Tale About Empathy and Love

New Book Alert: The Unseen Blossom by Zlaikha Y. Samad and L’mere Younossi; Beautiful Magical Allegorical Modern Fairy Tale About Empathy and Love




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: The Unseen Blossom reads almost like a fairy tale. Once Upon a Time, a princess meets a handsome commoner. They are given a task to go on a journey to retrieve a magical object. Along the way, they encounter other creatures that either help or hinder their progress giving them side quests that add to their journey. After much struggle, they reach their goal and fall in love.

Cut and dry, The Unseen Blossom would be no different from “Cinderella” or “Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp,” but the authors, Zlaikha Y. Samad and L'mere Younossi made their fairytale much deeper than the usual clichés. Instead The Unseen Blossom is a beautiful allegorical tale about love and empathy that has plenty of romance and magic that the best fairy tales share. It is for all ages and people of all faiths.

Princess Zuli, an Afghan princess, visits her favorite fig tree in her garden but while caring for the tree she is pushed onto the path of Lamar, a shoemaker's son. The two encounter a rock creature that tells them that Afghanistan is a country torn apart by war, bloodshed, and inequality. What can help save it is a fig blossom. The two are destined to work together to find it and bring it to Kabul.

This will be an odd quest. (After all, who has ever seen a fig tree blossom?) But journey they do through a landscape of fairies, royal fish, flying horses, talking birds and many strange landscapes with such names as The Garden of Tulips, The Garden of Lily Ponds, and The Garden of Roses to reach their goal.

It's kind of strange to say this about a book that has no illustrations, but The Unseen Blossom is a visually beautiful book. Samad and Younossi's writing creates evocative word pictures that are vibrant almost hallucinatory. The secret is in the little details such as their description of a waterfall in which the “water pounded onto the rocks below, creating an enticing silvery pool. Under the moon's gaze, the waterfall looked like a wall of shimmering silver and gold coins.”

Some of the most beautiful sections are in the Garden of Tulips and the Garden of Roses. The former features the characters traveling through a garden of different colored flowers that are so delicately described that the fragrances leaps off the pages.

The flora in the Garden of Roses is a somewhat disappointing follow up consisting solely of white roses, but the bird life more than makes up for that. Not only are they different types, but they are so dense that there are moments where the bird's wings look like something else; crows resemble a night sky, doves take the form of wings, multicolored plumages resemble tiaras and gowns. These details and descriptions give off the impression that the Reader is walking into someone else's dream.

Besides the dream like setting, Samad and Younossi give us compelling characters to take this fairy tale journey. Zuli is hardly a damsel in distress. She is aware of the situations outside the palace walls because she often dressed as a commoner to sneak out. She is very adventurous and sometimes haughty. (She engages in a few quarrels with Lamar along the way.) However she is also skilled in diplomacy such as when she negotiates with a tyrannical fish queen who surprisingly acquiesces to her suggestion with little argument. Zuli has what it takes to be a good ruler especially in a male dominated society.

Lamar is also a developed character. While not a prince, he is extremely charming as he shows in a letter he composes to Zuli revealing his deep feeling for her. He is quite intelligent as he is able to recognize signs and portents. He is also very protective of Zuli as we learn that he used to follow her on her excursions out of the palace. Throughout the book, Zuli and Lamar show that they are more than their titles of princess and commoner and that is the point of their journey.

As Zuli and Lamar travel, they probe into their inner consciousness and become self-actualized. Some characters appear that had previous connections to them through dreams and stories, implying that they are spirit guides to help them on their path.

Part of this self-actualization is empathy. Every time they help other characters or each other, they understand their predicament and do all they can to change that. They know that to help heal a country that has been torn apart by war, people need to empathize with each other and see others as people and not enemies incapable of understanding.

Classics Corner: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster; A Fantastic Magical Journey With Deep Meaning

Classics Corner: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster; A Fantastic Magical Journey With Deep Meaning

By Julie Sara Porter,

Bookworm Reviews

The Phantom Tollbooth is a classic Juvenile novel in the tradition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or The Chronicles of Narnia. On the surface, it’s an imaginative story about a boy who goes to a fantasy world, meets unusual creatures, goes on a quest to save the world, and is declared a hero. What makes The Phantom Tollbooth a classic along the lines of Alice is the depth that the journey takes. The Phantom Tollbooth is a magical journey that is really an allegory about the importance of learning.

The protagonist, Milo, is a young boy who the narrator tells us “doesn't know what to do with himself not just sometimes but always.” He can't get excited about anything. His toys and books bore him. He finds his school lessons unimportant. He isn't satisfied when he goes places. He is one unhappy young boy and would be miserable for the rest of his life if he didn't find a mysterious tollbooth that appears in his room with instructions on how to use it.

Milo drives his small electric car through the tollbooth and finds himself on the road to Dictionopolis, a fantasy kingdom with residents that live for words and letters. Dictionopolis’ ruler King Azaz is in constant conflict with his brother, The Mathemagician, the ruler of the neighboring kingdom of Digitopolis, whose residents live for numbers. Milo learns that Azaz and the Mathemagician will continue to war with each other until someone goes to the Castle of Air and rescues the Princesses of Sweet Rhyme and Pure Reason who bring balance to the world. Naturally Milo is the lucky volunteer for the quest.

As seen by the summary alone, the Phantom Tollbooth is a buffet of symbolism and verbal byplay. Only a truly gifted writer could create characters named Rhyme and Reason (as in the old saying “There is no rhyme or reason.”) with a straight face. Naturally the two kingdom's rulership of words and numbers illustrate the basics of learning. (Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.)

The book is filled with clever plays on words such as a place called Conclusions (which naturally can only be reached by Jumping to it.) When Milo says that he got in a bad situation because “he wasn't thinking.”

Another character tells him the only way out is to start thinking which pulls Milo out of his trouble.

The visits to Dictionopolis and Digitopolis are rich in passages which take word and number concepts literally. Milo goes to a word market where Dictionopolis residents actually eat their words and each letter has a different taste. (C is crunchy and chocolate, while I is very cold, and so on.) The Spelling Bee is an adorable insect that spells words. The Whether Man is a character who wonders whether there will be weather.

Meanwhile, at Digitopolis there is a figure called the Dodecahedron with ten faces and a different emotion for each face. A boy is the .58 of his average family of mother, father, and 2.58 children and looks like it. (He has only half a body.). There are roads to Infinity in which unwary travelers keep going without stopping.

The clever characters and situations aren't just found in the two kingdoms. They are sprinkled throughout the book. Milo is aided on his journey by Tock, a stern but lovable watchdog that has a timepiece on his back and the Humbug, a pompous braggart who occasionally is able to talk himself and his friends out of a bad situation.

 Milo and his friends also meet a conductor who conducts colors each morning and night (his sunsets and his sunrises are particularly gorgeous) and the Sound Keeper, who collects every beautiful sound in the world. With each character and situation, Milo learns to appreciate the beauty of words, color, sounds, and numbers finding happiness that he took for granted in the real world.

Of course no fantasy would be complete without its antagonists and these are found within the minds of the character. (and no doubt the Reader.) Early in the book, Milo encounters the Doldrums, lethargic creatures that have busy days of lazing about, dawdling and dreaming,and putting off until tomorrow. The Doldrums echo Milo’s earlier depression and are warnings for what he could have become if he hadn't taken the journey through the Tollbooth.

On their way to rescue Rhyme and Reason, Milo, Tock, and the Humbug have to journey through the aptly named Forest of Ignorance and encounter several demons that like the Doldrums symbolize  psychological traps people fall into. There's the Terrible Trivium who makes Milo and his friends do mindless unnecessary tasks to distract them from their journey. The Demon of Insincerity claims to be a large terrifying creature but is really a small coward. A giant would rather conform to the thoughts and appearance of others so he could blend in rather than be his own individual.
 It is easy to see how the characters and the Readers can fall into the traps in the Forest of Ignorance. Because the demons are ones that we fall into every day, it becomes more meaningful to read about Milo and his friends get out of them and rescue Rhyme and Reason.

While this book was written for children, adults would certainly enjoy it for the clever word play, the references to words and numbers, the allegorical characters but also for the journey which shows the best way out of dull complacency or complete ignorance is learning and appreciating what we learn.