What do you think?
Rate this book
There's a Troll in My Popcorn
When Tula the invisible troll returns to school, she causes all sorts of trouble--or does she? by the author of There's a Troll in My Closet. Original.
90 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
9 people want to read
About the author
Carol Ellis
91 books91 followersCarol Ellis is an American author of young adult and children’s fiction. Her first novel, My Secret Admirer, was published in 1989 by Scholastic as part of their popular Point Thriller line.
She went on to write over fifteen novels, including a few titles in the Zodiac Chillers series published by Random House in the mid-1990s, and two titles in The Blair Witch Files series for young adults, published by Bantam between 2000 and 2001.
She went on to write over fifteen novels, including a few titles in the Zodiac Chillers series published by Random House in the mid-1990s, and two titles in The Blair Witch Files series for young adults, published by Bantam between 2000 and 2001.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 30, 2023
THE WORKS OF CAROL ELLIS, 1945-2022
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
My mother, Carol Ellis, passed away on November 5th, 2022. While she'd been retired for some time, she spent years making her living as an author for children and young adults. When I was a kid, I was tremendously proud of her status as a writer, but she always seemed vaguely embarrassed by it. As I grew older, she told me she didn't enjoy the process of writing, and I'm sure that was part of the problem but there was also something deeper. My mother was an extremely self-deprecating person, inclined to critique herself to a fault. As such, I think she was uncomfortable with her public status. Also, as an avid reader herself, I think she decided early on she would never measure up to the books and authors she admired. It saddened and confused me to hear her dismiss her writing and, from time to time, even become cynical about the whole concept of telling stories. This never lasted very long because she enjoyed reading too much, but it was still depressing. Later on, I would occasionally try to change her perspective by pointing out the long and (in my view) proud tradition of popular fiction authors, people who, yes, wrote largely for money but gave years of joy to millions of readers. She would just shrug and say something like "Sure, but I wasn't even that good." Even in the past few years, when I would tell her how so many people online would respond with comments like "Oh wow, I LOVED your mom's books growing up!" if I mentioned her in a comment to a post or video, she would brush it off. "Doesn't it make you happy, knowing people still like your work?," I'd ask. She'd shrug or look away and reply, "Sure, I guess so."
Despite her indifference, my mother's career as a YA and children's author was substantial. A conservative estimate would put the number of books she wrote or co-wrote somewhere north of 50, and there were shorter works as well. She's best remembered as a fixture of Scholastic's Point Thriller line from the late 80s to the mid 90s, but her work ranged over several genres and publishers, her career lasting from the late 1970s till 2017; in the weeks following her death, I started discovering material she never even mentioned to me.
Through the years, despite sharing my mother's passion for reading, I rarely read her work. While she didn't exactly come out and say so, it was pretty clear she'd prefer I not. There were occasional exceptions and, towards the end of her career, I sometimes assisted her, both as a researcher and as an uncredited co-author. But her main body of work seemed like something she didn't want to get into much, so I largely avoided it. Now I've lost her forever and, partially to distract myself from the grief but also to try and create some sort of memorial to her, I've decided to read through her works and comment on them here.
As I mentioned, my mother's writing career was extensive. A large portion of her work was ghostwriting for others and even a fair amount under her own name were series works where she was more less told what to write. There were also nonfiction works which were pretty tightly controlled by the editors as well. While I know she gave every project her all (no matter how little she enjoyed some of them) and no doubt put her stamp on all she wrote, I'm primarily interested in the peak of her career, that is novels written under her own name and over which she had at least some degree of artistic control. This comes out to 20 or so books. While I have most of these works, there are still some I'll have to search for online and in used bookstores.
There's no point in pretending these "reviews" will be objective. All the books will get 5 stars, although I will be honest about elements of my mom's work I don't care for. Mixed in with my comments on the books will be memories of the creation of those I was old enough to be aware of, memories of my mother and her thoughts and comments on the books, and thoughts about the culture and industry that shaped her career.
I have no illusions that my mother was some sort of literary genius. But her work touched many readers nonetheless. She was also an incredible human being, one of the kindest people anyone could hope to meet. I will miss her terribly for the rest of my life. My hope is these commentaries will act as a tribute to her and bring back some good memories for those who grew up with her work, just as they preserve some cherished memories for me of a very cherished person.
THERE'S A TROLL IN MY POPCORN
This is the second in my mother's ill-fated series for younger kids attempting to capitalize on the Troll doll craze of the early 1990s. See my review of the first book, "There's a Troll in My Closet," for a more general intro to the series. As I've written previously, my mom was usually not a fan of anything supernatural or fantastical. She was also more at home writing for teenagers than for children. However, in the first troll book she managed to write a very effective light fantasy/humor novel for grade school-aged kids that I found quite fun, albeit utterly predictable on every level. "There's a Troll in My Popcorn" very much continues in the vein of its predecessor, and is again accompanied by genuinely lovely illustrations by Pat Porter.
Tula the troll returns to explore the human world again, alternately delighting and exasperating her friend Annie, just in time for the school carnival! You can probably figure out the plot, right down to specifics, from that first sentence but, for the right age group, this is a fun, zany read. My mom was probably happy that most of the details of where Tula came from were dealt with in the first book, meaning she had less fantasy to deal with here. Personally I kind of missed those elements, and the flashes of character development that came with them, but this book works well as a kind of age-adjusted version of "Bewitched" or "I Dream of Jeannie." Tula's status as a troll is almost beside the point; she's an innocent mischief figure whose function is to create lighthearted shenanigans. This was more up my mother's alley and the good-natured fun goes quite smoothly indeed.
As a side note, I enjoyed the fact that some of the kids' misbehavior in "There's a Troll in My Popcorn" isn't finger-wagged at all. There are really no stakes in this book, which I think is totally by design. I'm aware that could actually come in for criticism, and fair enough. But taken on its own terms, this is very well handled. Sometimes kids (and the rest of us, for that matter) just want to kick back and have fun!
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
My mother, Carol Ellis, passed away on November 5th, 2022. While she'd been retired for some time, she spent years making her living as an author for children and young adults. When I was a kid, I was tremendously proud of her status as a writer, but she always seemed vaguely embarrassed by it. As I grew older, she told me she didn't enjoy the process of writing, and I'm sure that was part of the problem but there was also something deeper. My mother was an extremely self-deprecating person, inclined to critique herself to a fault. As such, I think she was uncomfortable with her public status. Also, as an avid reader herself, I think she decided early on she would never measure up to the books and authors she admired. It saddened and confused me to hear her dismiss her writing and, from time to time, even become cynical about the whole concept of telling stories. This never lasted very long because she enjoyed reading too much, but it was still depressing. Later on, I would occasionally try to change her perspective by pointing out the long and (in my view) proud tradition of popular fiction authors, people who, yes, wrote largely for money but gave years of joy to millions of readers. She would just shrug and say something like "Sure, but I wasn't even that good." Even in the past few years, when I would tell her how so many people online would respond with comments like "Oh wow, I LOVED your mom's books growing up!" if I mentioned her in a comment to a post or video, she would brush it off. "Doesn't it make you happy, knowing people still like your work?," I'd ask. She'd shrug or look away and reply, "Sure, I guess so."
Despite her indifference, my mother's career as a YA and children's author was substantial. A conservative estimate would put the number of books she wrote or co-wrote somewhere north of 50, and there were shorter works as well. She's best remembered as a fixture of Scholastic's Point Thriller line from the late 80s to the mid 90s, but her work ranged over several genres and publishers, her career lasting from the late 1970s till 2017; in the weeks following her death, I started discovering material she never even mentioned to me.
Through the years, despite sharing my mother's passion for reading, I rarely read her work. While she didn't exactly come out and say so, it was pretty clear she'd prefer I not. There were occasional exceptions and, towards the end of her career, I sometimes assisted her, both as a researcher and as an uncredited co-author. But her main body of work seemed like something she didn't want to get into much, so I largely avoided it. Now I've lost her forever and, partially to distract myself from the grief but also to try and create some sort of memorial to her, I've decided to read through her works and comment on them here.
As I mentioned, my mother's writing career was extensive. A large portion of her work was ghostwriting for others and even a fair amount under her own name were series works where she was more less told what to write. There were also nonfiction works which were pretty tightly controlled by the editors as well. While I know she gave every project her all (no matter how little she enjoyed some of them) and no doubt put her stamp on all she wrote, I'm primarily interested in the peak of her career, that is novels written under her own name and over which she had at least some degree of artistic control. This comes out to 20 or so books. While I have most of these works, there are still some I'll have to search for online and in used bookstores.
There's no point in pretending these "reviews" will be objective. All the books will get 5 stars, although I will be honest about elements of my mom's work I don't care for. Mixed in with my comments on the books will be memories of the creation of those I was old enough to be aware of, memories of my mother and her thoughts and comments on the books, and thoughts about the culture and industry that shaped her career.
I have no illusions that my mother was some sort of literary genius. But her work touched many readers nonetheless. She was also an incredible human being, one of the kindest people anyone could hope to meet. I will miss her terribly for the rest of my life. My hope is these commentaries will act as a tribute to her and bring back some good memories for those who grew up with her work, just as they preserve some cherished memories for me of a very cherished person.
THERE'S A TROLL IN MY POPCORN
This is the second in my mother's ill-fated series for younger kids attempting to capitalize on the Troll doll craze of the early 1990s. See my review of the first book, "There's a Troll in My Closet," for a more general intro to the series. As I've written previously, my mom was usually not a fan of anything supernatural or fantastical. She was also more at home writing for teenagers than for children. However, in the first troll book she managed to write a very effective light fantasy/humor novel for grade school-aged kids that I found quite fun, albeit utterly predictable on every level. "There's a Troll in My Popcorn" very much continues in the vein of its predecessor, and is again accompanied by genuinely lovely illustrations by Pat Porter.
Tula the troll returns to explore the human world again, alternately delighting and exasperating her friend Annie, just in time for the school carnival! You can probably figure out the plot, right down to specifics, from that first sentence but, for the right age group, this is a fun, zany read. My mom was probably happy that most of the details of where Tula came from were dealt with in the first book, meaning she had less fantasy to deal with here. Personally I kind of missed those elements, and the flashes of character development that came with them, but this book works well as a kind of age-adjusted version of "Bewitched" or "I Dream of Jeannie." Tula's status as a troll is almost beside the point; she's an innocent mischief figure whose function is to create lighthearted shenanigans. This was more up my mother's alley and the good-natured fun goes quite smoothly indeed.
As a side note, I enjoyed the fact that some of the kids' misbehavior in "There's a Troll in My Popcorn" isn't finger-wagged at all. There are really no stakes in this book, which I think is totally by design. I'm aware that could actually come in for criticism, and fair enough. But taken on its own terms, this is very well handled. Sometimes kids (and the rest of us, for that matter) just want to kick back and have fun!
Displaying 1 of 1 review