Toto Chan the Little Girl At the window

Toto Chan was written by a Japanese author name Tetsuko Koruyanagi and this is a semi autobiography of her self when she was just a little girl with the nick name of Toto-Chan. The book recalls her memory in her extraordinary school Tomoe Gakuen elementary school just before the pacific war begun (The Atomic Bomb that falls in Japan).

Tomoe Gakuen was an elementary school headed by Sosaku Kobayashi who uses the Eurythmics method of teaching. He had gone to Europe twice to study the Eurythmics method of teaching music of Jaques-Dalcroze. He loves children and he started his school in six abandoned railroad cars in 1937 with a philosophy that the basic of education have to make the children feel happy and free, which is why in Tamoe Gakuen the children have freedom to pick which lesson they want to study first. All of the activity at school was design specially for each of their student.

Toto-Chan was a student with amazing energy that made her get in trouble even in the first week at first grade of her school life. Toto-Chan was drop out from her ordinary school because the teacher can not handle her. Fortunately for Toto-Chan she has an amazing mother who very wisely keeps the drop out issue as a secret from Toto Chan until she grown up in order to keep Toto Chan dignity and high self esteem.

Toto-Chan’s mother then sends her to Tomoe Gakuen elementary school that was held by Mr. Kobayashi. And all the adventure and lesson for Toto Chan live has just begun in the Tomoe Gakun. Firstly Toto Chan fell in love with the train coach that was use as the classroom then when she met Mr. Kobayashi she felt very comfortable talking to him and immedietlly feel close and a bond was made between them. Tomoe Gakuen made a deep impression in Toto Chan live. Unfortunately in the World War II, Tomoe Gakuen School was destroyed in the American bombing of Tokyo in 1945.

This book brings awareness to us that sometimes letting children to do what they want is a good way to learn for them too. An education should not make the children feel in a prison of mind. So if you are a parent or a teacher or someone who wants to know about child education I really recommend you to read “Toto Chan the Little Girl At the window”.

Love Can Lie

I bought this book just a few day ago from an online book store, first I assumed that this book “Love can Lie” was written by an author named Alexander Romanoff, and frankly when I read the author name my memory went back to the Romanoff clan (the last tsar of Russia) and I immedietlly feel interesting in this book because for me the Romanoff family still have a magic in it and it will be interesting to read a book that was written by one of them.

But when I bought and read it I found out that the book was actually written by a group of author and it was a bundle of prose from them, the writers was : Alexander Romanoff, Reza Jula’I, Morteza Miraftabi, Shahrnush Parsipur, and Moniru Ravanipur and they all write one or two prose in this book and all of them is a powerful story with lots of philosophical word, that hard to understand but luckily they also give some kind of thesaurus about the word for us in the end of each prose to make it easier to understand (although sometimes I still think it is kind a hard to do because sometimes you just pass the hard word and when you get to the end of the prose you already forget which one the hard word was).

The most powerful story in this book was of course the main one “Love can lie”. The story line was about Nag Hong Fah a Chinese who lived in America (I think..) and he have a wife named Yuan Quai but his wife was unfertile so he married another women with hope that the other women will gave him a son to follow the family line. The other women was Fanny Mei Hi, she was a prostitute who have 9/10 blood of Chinese but she always deny it.

Fanny and Nag Hong Fah live happily and Fanny gave birth to a son named Brian, but when Fanny gave birth to another child which is now a girl named Little Fanny their live suddenly change, In Chinese tradition a girl is not worth it, as Nag Hong Fah said “a girl is only good to gave birth or to keep the house clean”. That is why Nag Hong Fah attitude toward Brian and little Fanny was different. Although he also gave affection to little Fanny and his attitude doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love the baby but it is the tradition that make him act differently to little Fanny. He also planning to sell little Fanny to other Chinese relative.

Seeing that Fanny as the mother of the baby feel that this is not fair and she tries all that she can do to keep little Fanny and gave her the best live and education she deserve. But the problem is Fanny doesn’t have any money to provide the best life for little Fanny. And what can she do? After all she is just a woman. All of the dilemmatic problems come across fanny. She even thinking about going back to the prostitution world in order to save her little Fanny. The end of the story was difficult to guess which make it more interesting to read the other entire story in this book.

The story was truly powerful and interesting to follow. But I have to warn you there are a lot of hard philosophical words in this book. So if you like a heavy reading this one is absolutely for you :)

The Stolen Child

First I want to be honest with you all that this is the second review of this book. I make the first one by writing the review based on my interpretation on my friend story. She read the stolen child book and tell me that it was a great story and then she tells me the story then I write a review based on it. well now I know that it was wrong to do such thing and if you want to write a book review you have to read it by your self because maybe sometimes your interpretation will be different from the original book story. Well now I'm trying to write the second review based on what I myself read from the book. I'm very sorry to the fans of this book who read my first review so please do enjoy my second review to make it up for the first one :).


This book written by Keith Donohue, telling the story about an old traditional myth of Hobgoblin or Changeling. Hobgoblins are little fairies who like to kidnap children and switch places with human children. A hobgoblin will transformer into the human child and replace kidnapped child live, meanwhile the child will turn to a hobgoblin as the exchange, when a child turn into a hobgoblin he will be a child forever unless he can kidnap another child and then switch places with him. Physically a hobgoblin is a child forever more but his soul continue growing and mature. And when he returned to the "upper world", the hobgoblin takes up the aging process where he/she left off.

Seven years old Henry Day is a typical child who lives in rural area. One day he runs away from home after an argument with his mother. Henry feels angry when her mother attention and affection has to be shared for his two little twin sister beside for himself. He was an egoistic child. Henry wondering alone in the woods and captured by a bunch of hobgoblins. The hobgoblins actually has keep their eyes on Henry for a long time because they know Henry is a perfect child for changeling. When the changeling happen Henry Day’s life changes forever when a hobgoblin alters his appearance so that he looks exactly like Henry, then the hobgoblin who now has transfered to Henry day decides to take Henry's part in life. Since then the true Henry Day turns into a hobgoblin and must join the other hobgoblins in the woods, and wait in line for his chance to change places with another child.

The hobgoblin who takes Henry Day part was also a child named Gustav before he was kidnapped by another hobgoblin. After he takes place of Henry Day he then uses his power to make himself aging year after and becomes the adult Henry Day. After a long time live in each other new world, Gustav and Henry try to remember their life before. Henry as a hobgoblin has an extremely difficult time, as one would expect, adapting to his new life in the woods and is unable to completely forget and leave his old life behind despite the urging of his fellow hobgoblins. Henry try to collect pieces of his life story by writing in his journal, meanwhile Gustav try to track his live until he comes to Europe. One time they meet at a point when they realize that both of them wants to get their past life back.

When you read this I suggest you to concentrate to the story carefully because the story about human Henry Day (Gustav) and Hobgoblin Henry Day (the true Henry) was written in a chapter randomly, first chapter is about Gustav, the second chapter is about Henry, the third part about Gustav again..then it became a random continuity (you know what I mean right?).

A very enchanting book with very descriptive story, lyrical in its telling. Spinning the story on two worlds that imaginary exists side by side. The human and the fantasy world. It is also a story about memories of past, present, and future live that always seems to connecting one live.