The Song of the Quarkbeast (2011), by Jasper Fforde

The Song of the Quarkbeast is the welcome sequel to the Ffordian adventure that is The Last Dragonslayer, so I was very excited to be leant it by a friend… but somewhat disappointed in the outcome. While it does contain the requisite Ffordisms to be bone-ticklingly humorous, it was just a bit too “more-of-the-same” to engage me fully. The plot is sound, but the editing is lacking. Twice at least, explanations and sentences from earlier in the book are repeated in a way that seems unintentional and thus flawed (15, 45; 51, 215)… I don’t know that this is the fault of the author: after all, he must have revised the text numerous times. Seriously, though (she said, putting on her editor’s hat), this is why authors need good editors: it is the editor’s job to make sure that technical errors, transcription errors, logical errors, and just mere unintended silliness, do not make it into the final print.

Editing and other annoying minutæ aside, The Song of the Quarkbeast has some truly magical moments.  The plot is sufficiently convoluted to support Fforde’s inane sense of humour; the characters are quirky but delightful—well, except for people like the All Powerful Blix, protagonist Jennifer Strange’s arch-nemesis (all good heroes need an arch-nemesis: just ask Perry the Platypus…) and recently appointed Court Mystician. The impetus of the fundamental conflict is the attempt by the despotic ruler to control magic and magicians, which—as Jennifer states, “are best independent … they should serve no one in particular, and be beholden to no—”… but she is cut off by the King (114). The crisis our heroes at KAZAM Inc. find themselves in is ultimately averted by a dividing Quarkbeast and a powerful spell known as the Transient Moose. How fitting, for these are two of the most loveable characters Fforde has created.  Overall, it is only my editorial OCD that impinges upon great enjoyment of Fforde’s recent foray into literature for a younger crowd; even as an adult, I eagerly await book three in the Last Dragonslayer series.

Don’t Laugh at Giraffe (2012), by Rebecca Bender

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 18.1

Don’t Laugh at Giraffe

This colourful picture book lives its message: one of the best antidotes for sadness is laughter. The illustrations by author/illustrator Rebecca Bender delight the reader even before the humorous and effective twist at the end of the story. A successful element in the interaction of text and image is that Bender bolds the important words—mainly the verbs—on each page. So with the bold verbs creating motion, and the energetic pictures showing action and emotion, what Bender has created is a very lively picture book for young readers, who will be able to pick out the bolded words and match them to the action in the pictures.
In the scorching heat of the African sun, Giraffe and Bird—best friends but always bugging each other—have a tussle and are hot and thirsty. Already, many young readers will identify with two friends who are so dissimilar but yet “you rarely see them apart.” When Giraffe has troubles bending all the way down to the water, and ultimately falls in, all of the animals—including Bird—laugh at him. True to the age of the readership, this hurts Giraffe’s feelings, and he goes away, sad and humiliated. Bird, an insightful little chap for all his flighty ways—soon figures out that there is something he can do to help his friend. No moralizing here, just a little bird thinking about how his friend obviously feels. Young readers will be able to internalize the lesson of empathy well, as it is so subtle; Bender does not preach at all, but merely shows her readers—largely with her beautiful illustrations—one option in this social situation. The answer Bird comes up with is to make a laughing stock of himself: he sings, he dances, he teases the other animals, he makes a complete fool of himself, laughing all the time with the animals he is teasing—even Giraffe. “Anyone can see that the bird loves the attention … and the giraffe finally has a drink”… and the reader feels happy and giggly watching Bird floating on his back, spitting water up into the air.

The Last Dragonslayer (2010), by Jasper Fforde

I read the first five of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series as they came out in the early years of this millennium (I had to say that!), and was thrilled by the irreverent humour, the originality of concept, and the artfully handled literary allusions. “But,” I thought to myself, “these cannot be literature for the average young adult, for the simple reason that they require an extensive background in the classics of English literature.” What a shame, as I know my teenagers would love the humour and the disruption of readers’ expectations that Fforde revels in.  So finally, in 2010, Fforde gratified my hopes, and produced his first YA novel. The Last Dragonslayer reveals the refusal to conform to readers’ expectations and narrative conventions, but is playing with a sub-genre more popular among child and young adult readers: fantasy, magic, and witchcraft. The tropes Fforde plays with will be recognizable to any readers familiar with Harry Potter, or Diana Wynne-Jones’s work, or Susan Cooper’s, Lloyd Alexander’s, Michael Ende’s, Cornelia Funke’s, Christopher Paolini’s, Chris D’Lacey’s… the list goes on.

The story centres around the Kazam Mystical Arts Management company, currently run by the “apprentice” Jennifer Strange, an orphan indentured to the owner, Mr. Zambini, who has mysteriously disappeared. Kazam’s business is to rent out sorcerers and other individuals adept at what magic there is left in the world: for magic is quickly being depleted as the dragons slowly die out. The last dragon is aging, and the magical world is in upheaval. Fforde constructs a world in which magic is an inherent part of consensus reality, woven through the day-to-day complications and frustrations of contemporary middle-class life: the combination is sardonic, and hilarious.

Part of the history of magic in the Kingdom of Hereford, in the Ununited Kingdoms, where Kazam is located, are the magical creatures created before such sorcery was outlawed. The fiercest of these is the quarkbeast: “a small, hyena-shaped creature that is covered in leathery scales and often described as: One-tenth Labrador, six-tenths velociraptor and three-tenths kitchen food blender” (Song of the Quarkbeast 87). You cannot train a quarkbeast: it chooses its owner. Or not. Wild quarkbeasts are rare, and hunted much as lions or grizzlies are in our world: as trophies. Quarkbeasts are also “fiercely loyal” (120), affectionate, and “for all their fearsome looks … obedient to a fault” (94), with a “placid nature” (5) that is belied by their appearance. It is not their fault that the mere sight of one sends fear into the hearts of even the bravest; in fact, Jennifer’s “might have been so unaware [of his fearsome appearance] that he wondered why people always ran away screaming” (6). That Jennifer Strange has The Quarkbeast as her companion is a clue to the reader, as well as those around her, that she is something more than an unmagicked apprentice—which of course she also is. We like Jennifer, her fortitude and refusal to be cowed by disreputable but powerful political forces, but we love the Quarkbeast.

Jennifer Strange, prophesy says, is destined to be a key player in the political and magical situation developing in the Ununited Kingdoms. Ultimately, she has to make choices that pit her moral integrity against the financial security of those who depend upon her. The situation is sufficiently complex that readers can not necessarily anticipate her responses, and what seems to be the wrong choice turns out (in true Jasper Fforde style) to be not only right but essential.

Addison Addley and the Trick of the Eye (2009), by Melody DeFields McMillan

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 15.3.

Addison Addley and the Trick of the Eye

Maybe it’s just my maternal self over-powering my critical persona, but I prefer my protagonists—however young—to have a little respect for those around them.  Addison Addley has a sarcastic humour that gleans its power from insulting others, and impressing upon the reader his own superiority, despite that his friend, Sam, is the intelligent one: “Sam was squinting at the house.  I guess that made him think better. … The only good thing I could say about Trent was that his hair wasn’t as puffy as Tiffany’s.  Her head looks like a lampshade, and sometimes her face gets as red and shiny as a Christmas-tree bulb.  That’s why I call her The Lamp.  Tiffany always tries to annoy me.  She doesn’t have to try very hard, though …” (22).  Granted the ideas and even the ways of expressing them seem authentic to the 11-year-old boy, but the combination of complaining tone and arrogance really did not endear the protagonist to me…
Not wanting to condemn a book without more expert appraisal, I gave it to my son (12) and daughter (11).  He didn’t finish it—although he liked the main character, which rather put me in my place—because “nothing happened” in the first five chapters; she wouldn’t read it because she “didn’t like the character; he was rude.”  Neither child finished the novel, which does get interesting and engaging a little later…
I rather thought that the action was moderate but engaging; my only problem was in narrative attitude… but that didn’t seem to bother the readers for whom the text was intended: young boys. I must conclude, therefore, that Addison Addley seems to hit the mark for its readers, despite my parental objection to the “attitude” its protagonist projects.

The Willoughbys (2008), by Lois Lowry

Recognizing in their lives a certain archaic narrative quality, one of the Willoughby twins asks, “Shouldn’t we be orphans?” (28). Deciding in the affirmative, the four siblings set out to improve their existence by ridding themselves of their truly abhorrent, neglectful if not abusive, parents. This could be handled poorly, or even excessively—imagine Roald Dahl—but in Lowry’s capable hands the story seems almost parochial, which of course adds intensely to the ironic humour she creates.

“Nefariously Written & Ignominiously Illustrated by the Author” (cover), The Willoughbys is quite a departure from Lowry’s usual tone. It is primarily a spoof of Victorian “orphan-and-benefactor” novels, with a metafictional tendency to have the characters comment how their lives are like The Secret Garden, or Great Expectations, or Mary Poppins… only to be disabused of that belief by other characters.  The tongue-in-cheek intertextuality requires a bit of literary experience on the part of the reader, but even without that, the novel is great fun.  “Lemony Snicket meets L. M. Montgomery” is the overall effect; the characters are manipulated into happiness very tidily, if predictably, and the reader is satisfied with both the journey and the arrival.

Stardust (1998), by Neil Gaiman

A star falls in Faërie, and is hunted by three separate individuals for their own gain.  This story is an original plot line, although like other magical fantasies it combines a number of known tropes and mythologies. Like Gaiman’s Neverwhere, the audience is not well defined: the style is very much in keeping with the narrative voice and fairy-story style of Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle, which makes it seem like a children’s or very young adult novel, while the content (descriptive [although not graphic] passages of a sexual nature, for example) place it on the adult shelves in most bookstores. Wikipedia asserts that this is the “first solo prose novel by Gaiman,” but I think I would consider that Neverwhere.  Stardust was in the first instance a “novel with pictures,” serially published in comic/graphic novel form; then a hardcover novel without images; then a 2007 movie which, while necessarily different, is as entertaining and engaging as the print versions (in my estimation).

I Owe You One (2011), by Natalie Hyde

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults. It appears in volume 17.2.

I Own You One

“How does a guy go about paying back a life debt anyway? And what if it involves a transmission tower, an ice-cream truck, and a few sticks of dynamite?”  How could any young reader resist a book whose back cover asks this question?  I Owe You One lives up to expectations, providing a fun-filled “house-that-jack-built” story of connections, both logistical and emotional.  Wes, the protagonist, builds on his dead father’s lessons of respect and honour, and learns the value of community and giving. The sacrifice he makes to help the old woman—once an adventurous ski-racer—who saved his life, and to whom he feels he owes a “life debt,” ultimately is about love and respect, not the “one” he feels he “owes” her.
It is seldom that a text written simply, for younger readers, makes me both giggle and tear up.  Natalie Hyde has created characters with humourous traits, realistic flaws, and yet a sense of integrity and community that restore one’s faith in people.  There is sufficient suspense, and juvenile pranks, to grip young readers’ imaginations, yet the ethical and moral code that Wes is striving to adhere to does not come across as didactic or incongruous. The balance is effective, resulting in a text that is as rewarding to give to a child as it will be for the child to read.

Stuff: The Life of a Cool Demented Dude (2004), by Jeremy Strong

I first read—and taught—Stuff shortly after it came out. My strongest memory of the reading experience is travelling up to Simon Fraser University on public transit, with the cover of the very obviously young novel displayed to the world, unable to keep myself from laughing aloud. Slightly embarrassing, given the artwork. I can’t remember now what it was—Pankhurst, the “radical feminist rabbit” (39); the “hearty farty” knickers (13); the adventures of Punykid—but regardless, I found it one of the funniest novels I had read in a long, long time. When the American ARC came into my hands a couple of years later, I was struck by the level of my disappointment in the cover art. I have since read through the American edition, complete with drawings, and been equally disappointed, as have students at both the elementary and the university level. Seb Burnett’s quirky illustrations in the British edition suit Jeremy Strong’s intelligent but ribald humour to a T; Matthew Armstrong’s have a much more “American manga” look to them, as if they are trying just that bit too hard to be cool. This does not do justice to Strong’s obvious intent, for—despite the novel’s subtitle—it is the geeky misfits who will recognize themselves in and take heart from Simon and Pete’s escapades.

Simon is “a fund of information, which is why everyone at school calls [him] Stuff. [He’s] full of it” (8): and very liberal he is with his information, too. Stuff is hilariously irreverent: intelligent yet immature, annoying to the adults around him yet completely comprehensible when we see the world through his eyes. His story is a combination of narrative, comic, and encyclopædic digressions that weave—or maybe lump—together to form a cohesive whole that only Simon and Pete, his best friend, can ever hope to understand. When a substitute teacher reveals the story of Samuel Johnson’s refutation of Berkeley, the boys go about kicking rocks… and lockers… and each other… and “nobody else had a clue what [they] were on about” (54): “how life goes” (93) for teenaged boys. Of course, readers are privy to the strange convolutions of Stuff’s inmost thoughts, so we are privileged in our ability to follow. This becomes especially empowering when the tangential stories Stuff tells us—for example, his “Frog Experience” (8-9) or his “Short Note About Cuckoos” (92)—appear as random elements in the comic strip he is anonymously writing for his art teacher’s school magazine (and thesis project). The five episodes of “Punykid’s Battle with the Drooling Dorkoids” interspersed throughout Stuff’s narrative are both an entertaining graphic representation of the story as we have it so far and a cathartic experience for Stuff, who excises his teenage angst through his art, creating a world in which he might—if Skysurfer can save Punykid in time—just get the girl.  What to readers in Stuff’s school appear as random narrative or graphic elements, readers of the novel recognize as important aspects of Stuff’s teenage reality. The art teacher asks, “Whose that tubby little man who keeps kicking things?” (180), and we know the answer.

Between the laughter and the energy inspired by engaging with Stuff’s witty yet disconnected ideas, readers will find Stuff not only hilarious but exhilarating; I couldn’t put it down.

Angus, Thongs, and Full-frontal Snogging (1999), by Louise Rennison

This novel has had a lot of hype; it is on many critics’ and librarians’ lists of “must reads” for young girls, but its status seems unwarranted upon reading it… The protagonist is not very likeable; I would not have wanted her for my friend as a teen.  She is inconsiderate and bossy towards her best friend; disrespectful and dishonest towards her parents; and thoughtless and self-centred in general.  He voice is perhaps authentic, but not engaging; and yet she gets the guy (sort of) in the end, without any learning process on her part.  It is not a novel of development or maturation, but rather a romp through 4^th form at an all-girl’s school, replete with make-up, fashion, boys boys boys, and the ubiquitous snarkiness that authors attribute to girls of this age.  In terms of humour, Jeremy Strong’s Stuff (2005) is far superior… and in Stuff the protagonists actually learn something about themselves…

Bogbrush the Barbarian (2010), by Howard Whitehouse

Illustrated by Bill Slavin.

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults. It appears in volume 16.2.

Bogbrush the Barbarian

The best thing about Bogbrush the Barbarian is the illustration.  Slavin’s hilarious renditions of Bogbrush and his associates—Bogbrush being lectured by the rather maternal high priestess, who is standing on a chair (71); Bogbrush astride his donkey steed, feet flat on the ground as they walk (21); Bogbrush carrying the tired donkey at the end of the journey (149)—bring forth a chuckle that the story itself cannot produce.  The premise of the tale, like the narrative elements, is derivative.  Cressida Cowell has already covered the theme of “humourous retelling of barbarian history” successfully in the How to Tame Your Dragon series; Bogbrush’s quest is to remove the “Axe from the Stone” (although the author is explicit about this derivation); and the narrative interjections to explain words and concepts to the reader are more condescending (and less thorough and correct) than Lemony Snicket’s clever interruptions in the Series of Unfortunate Events.  Part of what makes authors like Roald Dahl and Robert Munsch so popular with children—and not always with adults—is their collusion with the child-reader against the adult world.  Whitehouse, on the other hand, sets himself in opposition to his reader, with comments such as “Don’t ask so many questions, kid” (6) and “Don’t ask why. Shut up or I’ll stop typing right now, I mean it—” (159).  Confusion arises, too, in the narrative explanations that present “the Fabled City of Birmingham [and] the fabled heroes of legend, Duran Duran” (154) or “distant Tzing [fictional], legendary Kalash [a real place], unpleasant Yeccchh [fictional] and mythical Saskatoon [real, which the reader might know…]” (127).  And I must admit I was slightly offended at the explanation of the term pluck: “used in ancient, moldy British novels where spirited youths of a century ago take on bullies” (169). Surely Mr. Whitehouse is aware that in most of the novels he is describing, the “bullies” are the indigenous peoples?  The “Fun with Ethics” on page 141, though, is rather funny, as are a few other shining moments of humour. Over all, however, I would not recommend this text to readers: go read the others I have listed, instead.