The Catalogue of the Universe

by Margaret Mahy

Book Overview

Angela and Tycho seem an unlikely pair -- she is beautiful and confident, he is awkward and quietly intellectual. They have long shared a passion for deciphering the universe outside their own... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 068985353X
• ISBN13: 9780689853531
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: Simon Pulse
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.8" x 6.4"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 9 and higher

Customer Reviews

Great book for High School and up

I originally saw this book and though it might be a good one to add to my classroom collection (as a middle school science teacher). So I put it on my wishlist. It was given to me as a gift a few weeks ago and with time on my hands I decided to read it. This book was more of a romance than I expected and less of a science book. While it had some good science material in it about the stars, I do not believe it would be good for kids at age 12. Two teens become friends after viewing a lunar eclipse, though they have known each other since they were 5. He has been in love with her since they met, and she has been in love with romance. It seems a typical one-sided relationship for him until she realizes that romantic ideas have a place, but do not rule all we do. She finally sees him for the wonderful person he has always been and falls in love with him. Though I do not usually read romance-type stories, it is a nice story and I am glad that I read it.

One Great Character, In Love

Ever since he first saw her, in kindergarten, Tycho has been madly in love with Angela. However, he was always small and funny-looking and at first she didn't notice him at all. Later, when she did notice him, she made him into a best friend instead of a boyfriend as he would have liked. She reserved that position for better looking and more confident guys in their class. As her best friend, though, Tycho does hold a special position in Angela's life. He knows things about her she doesn't share with her boyfriends, and he is the one she often turns to when she has a serious problem. Now that she is a senior in high school, treading water until the end of the year, there is something bothering her. Angela has never known her father. Her mother is her best friend and greatest protector and over the years has told her stories about the wonderful man who was her father, but Angela has never met him. Now she has managed to track him down, and she wants to meet him and talk to him, to hear what he has to say about her. She wants a relationship with him, but she suspects her mother won't approve and somehow her boyfriend Robin isn't the right one to help her. So Angela turns to Tycho to be her partner in meeting her father. But when things go all wrong and Angela's world seems to crash around her, will Tycho be strong enough to help her get back on her feet? I loved Tycho's personality and his family's dynamics. I also liked the history between Tycho and Angela, and I liked his big blowup and his confession after she met her father. He was a fantastic character. The book threw me off a bit, though, starting off seeming mysterious but then ending up staying strictly in the real world. Because I liked Tycho so much, I didn't like the way Angela kept stringing him along.

Are you not reader enough to know?

My friends, I have been tricked. Throughly fooled. Utterly led astray. In short, Margaret Mahy may well be having a good laugh at my ineptitude. Having known her to be considered perhaps the greatest young adult fantasy writer in the known world, I picked up "The Catalogue of the Universe" with my typical snotty snobby snitty opinions of what the story would entail. Actually, since I like to read books without knowing ANYTHING about the plot ahead of time, my opinions of this book totaled one in number. I was convinced that this was a fantasy book. I mean, the title of the book is "The Catalogue of the Universe" for pete's sake. The cover shows planets and young swimmy faces. And it's written by the woman who wrote the illustrious "The Changeover". So I picked up, read it through, and kept stopping at the end of each and every chapter to wonder where the magic was. Let this be a lesson to all, you foolish reviewers like myself who prefer to infer storylines rather than, oh say, read the summaries on the backs of the books. If you leap to conclusions, you're liable to make a fool of yourself. And I adore telling the world when I've been silly, so it worked out perfectly for me. In short (har har), "The Catalogue of the Universe" is a romantic, emotional, humorous, philosophical tale of two teens and the different ways in which they try to sort out the mysteries of the cosmos/their lives. Angela is beautiful and she knows it. She's the kind of girl who attracts men with relative ease and lives life exactly as she would like to. Of course she has a crazy single mom and she lives in a house with an honest-to-goodness outhouse, but that's fine with her. It's the fact that she's never met her biological father that stings. All at once charming and impulsive, Angela decides to enmesh her best friend Tycho in her plans to meet her pop for the very first time. Tycho has his own set of problems, however. As a particularly romantic and philosophical young man (in no little part due to his name), Tycho's in love with Angela. They both know this and they both know it's a hopeless situation. Plus he has a crazy family to deal with and some serious self-esteem issues. Still, in a series of wild confrontations, escapes, and rescues the two friends begin to learn a little more about themselves and their relationship with the Catalogue of the Universe. Mahy places herself at a disadvantage right from the start. She's placed her book squarely in the palms of a beautiful female protagonist. Many otherwise well-written books have faltered with this kind of character (most notably the oft banned, "Blood and Chocolate"). When a teen girl is beautiful and knows it, it's incredibly difficult not to make her a conceited little cur. Mahy tries her best to keep Angela under control, but the character is a little too headstrong and wild. She's likable once in a while but thoroughly detestable others. You begin to wonder why it is that fabulou

Margaret Mahy at her best

Margaret Mahy weaves subtle magic into this tale of a teenage girl, her eccentric mother, and her not-so-hopelessly nerdy friend. I hope that the publisher will see fit to issue another printing of this book, because I consider it to be Mahy's best work thus far.

Sensitive

I seem to get more out of this book each time I read it! Some books, when re-read at an older age, aren't as good as remembered. This isn't one of them! Angela's relationships with her mother and father are portrayed in all their complexity. However, it is her friendship with Tycho that is particularly perceptive and moving. It is good to see an authour deal with a relationship that is dificult to initiate and maintain - not just "happily ever after with the occasional spat" love. The issue of self-image as opposed to public image is also explored. All in all, a touching -but realistic- tale of changing relationships.