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Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes

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Jonathan Auxier opens his debut novel, Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes, with a description of Peter’s early childhood: 
“He was nursed on the milk of a wounded mother-cat, whom he met after crawling beneath the local alehouse. The cat permitted baby Peter to live with her in exchange for his picking the lice and ticks from her fur – until one tragic day some months later when the alehouse manager discovered them huddled beneath his porch. Furious at finding vermin in his establishment, the man shoved the whole family in a bag and tossed them into the bay. Using his skillful fingers to untie the bag…he managed to make it back to shore without too much trouble.”
Silly and quite sad, no? But then Auxier sums it up for us thusly:
“Until this point, you have been witness to Peter’s rather typical infancy – probably not unlike your own.”
That was the first laugh out loud moment of the book, and there were many more to come. The irreverent tone of the omniscient narrator characterizes the book and is its greatest strength. It was refreshing to get away from the first-person narratives that pervade children’s books, and especially delightful to read a voice that so consistently caught me off guard (in a good way).
When Peter Nimble was a baby, his eyes were pecked out by ravens. Blind, he made his own way on the streets and was eventually taken in by an unscrupulous man named Mr. Seamus. Mr. Seamus forced Peter to steal for him, keeping him locked up in a basement when he wasn’t picking pockets and robbing residences. Peter became a terrific, and terrifically unhappy, thief.
His fortunes change when he runs into a man – a huckster, really – selling magical hats to an eager audience on the street. Peter is picking the crowd’s pockets when the man calls him up to the front for a demonstration of a hat that will cure bad odor. The man seems to know quite a bit about Peter, and after the demonstration, he leaves his cart alone with the master thief. Peter can’t help but take a look inside, and it is there that he finds the box of Fantastic Eyes. When he pops the first pair of eyes in, he is magically transported to another place. In this place, he meets Professor Cake, who sends him (and Sir Tode, a cat/horse/knight) on a quest to save a faraway kingdom. Numerous exciting and silly adventures ensue.
Auxier’s imagination is impressive and tends toward the silly, but he keeps the stakes high. Children are used as slaves, ravens peck out infants’ eyes, and monstrous sea creatures threaten to gobble up everyone we have grown to care about. Some plot points are easy to decipher, but others are completely out of left field (and intentionally so). Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes is a bit of a throwback to classic children’s fantasies. It reminded me a little of the Oz books, which are also full of imaginative creatures and incredibly strange bits of magic. 
That said, I wasn’t ever able to really connect with the story as a whole. I approve wholeheartedly of silliness and a rollicking adventure, but I never felt much heart in the story. I don’t mean there has to be a lesson, but I wanted more depth out of the tale – deeper friendships, deeper meaning, something beyond silliness and clever phrases. Auxier almost gets there with the friendship between Peter and Sir Tode, but it never reaches what it could have been.
While I enjoyed Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes, it seemed to lose a bit of steam toward the end. Even younger readers will realize where the story will inevitably end, and watching Peter and his friends get there isn’t as exciting when that happens. The narrator remains wonderfully witty, the creatures and people that populate the tale are imaginative as ever, and the idea behind the Fantastic Eyes is wonderfully grotesque and should have great appeal to its target audience. The book is certainly delightful, but I wanted more.
Review copy received from the publisher. Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes is on shelves now.

And Then Things Fall Apart by Arlaina Tibensky

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Karina — who goes by the nickname Keek — might be having the worst summer of her entire life. She and her best friend are having a fight because her best friend wronged her. She and her boyfriend are also on the outs because of her virginity (yes, her virginity). Her parents are in the midst of a divorce because her father cheated on her mother with one of his employees, who is hardly older than she is and as a way to “clear her mind,” her mother abandons her to spend time across the country with her new-born cousin who may be dying.

It sounds like a recipe for a standard teen drama, but add to this that Keek is also sick with the chicken pox and is living in her grandmother’s technology-free zone with her favorite book (Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar) and her father hiding out in the basement, and you have a book that really stands out — it’s funny, insightful, passionate, and one of the most relatable books I’ve read in a long time.

Although the premise makes the book sound like it’s going to be a serious novel, the book is actually quite funny. Keek’s got a strange but powerful sense of humor, which includes avoiding swearing, in favor of using the term “sofa king.” But more than that, it’s obvious that her being sick with chicken pox, which affects the immune system of teens and adults much differently than it does in younger kids, has given her some perspective on the issues in her life. That, in conjunction with being alone with no way to communicate with her friends, has given her so much space to think.

There is very little dialog in this book. It’s all told from Keek’s point of view, and it’s told through diary form. When Keek moved into her grandmother’s tech-free zone, her grandmother gifts her a type writer (hence the cover), and it’s what keeps Keek occupied during her two weeks of the pox. But as much as it’s a diary she’s keeping, Keek is also aware that it’s not private. She’s sharing this story much like an author writes a book — for an audience of outside readers to consider, appreciate, and take from it what they need. Her grandmother’s been paging through it (Keek figures this one out through a few conversations she does have with her grandmother) and as much as it bothers her to know her grandmother is reading about the fight between her and her boyfriend over her virginity, she’s also a bit flattered someone wants to read about her life.

See, the key part of this story is that it is a love story to writing and to literature. Keek is passionately in love with Sylvia Plath’s classic The Bell Jar. Like any teen book worm, she rereads it, over and over again, and she commits to memory many of the passages and moments in the story that she relates to. She often asks herself what Esther Greenwood would do in a situation and, at times, she considers what Plath herself would do, given that The Bell Jar is semi-autobiographical. For me, this theme of the story was key to what made this book so relatable and such an enjoyable read; I got Keek completely. She wasn’t a loner by any means, but she really found passion in the written word and she wanted to grasp it and live it in any way she could. She didn’t hide behind books, but rather, she let them become a part of who she is and let them help guide her in figuring out how to solve the problems in her life.

I’ve read books before where the character becomes so enamored with another fictional character that they allow that literary figure become their role model and their moral compass. But in Tibensky’s story, Keek is completely her own person. She’s extremely different from Esther Greenwood, and yet she’s able to relate to that character and consider the actions that character would take in her situation and adjust accordingly. Whereas Esther traps herself in a bell jar, Keek wants to break free from hers, and she takes the steps possible to make that happen. I thought this device was employed well, and I thought that the use of The Bell Jar as an obsession for a 15-year-old girl couldn’t be more spot on. At 15, it was one of those books for me, so I understood Keek’s passion and devotion. Those feels still resonate for me when I read the right book, and I think any reader will get this completely.

Voice is easily the strongest element in this story, and it has to be, since the story is focused entirely on Keek’s internal thoughts and observations of life around her. Besides being funny, she’s a real, honest 15-year-old. She fixates on things that aren’t important, and as readers, we know she needs to do that to solve the broader issues and gain perspective on them. For instance, one night near the end of her sickness when she’s finally able to get out of her room and wander her grandmother’s house, she heads to the basement where her father’s living, and she fixates on the couch from her old house. It brings up a million memories and it triggers a host of emotions within her. But it’s that couch that causes her to delve a little deeper into her father’s room and discover that everything she thought about him and his actions that caused the decline of his marriage may have had a deeper reasoning behind them. Perhaps her mother wasn’t as innocent as she thought. I loved this way of giving us insight into the issues of Keek’s life because it felt authentic.

As much as I enjoyed this book, I did have a little bit of a challenge with how smart the book was. I don’t mean how smart Keek was, nor how smart the way she unraveled the underlying issues around her were. The book itself was a little too smart in its use of literature and writing, and at times, it bordered on too meta. Sometimes I wanted to be able to get it for myself, but instead, it was handed to me on a philosophical level that didn’t quite ring true to the voice and understanding of a 15-year-old, no matter how much a book worm she was. I don’t think this will be a turn off for readers, though, as I suspect many teens who will relate to Keek will think they’re just as deep as she is, despite a lack of life experience and perspective to prove otherwise to them.

I think this would be a good book to hand to fans of Leila Sales’s Mostly Good Girls because of the voice, but it’s one that I think most teen girls who like to read will appreciate. If this one had been around when I was 15, I could see it becoming a bit of my own Bell Jar. It was the little things — the setting in suburban Chicago, the passion for reading, the family issues — that resonated with me on a real personal level, and I can’t wait to start talking this book up with my big readers. Teen readers of classics will enjoy this one, too, as will your fans of Sylvia Plath (and you know who those kids are!). This is the kind of book where your passionate readers will underline passages and soak them in, mimicking Keek’s actions with Plath’s novel. Even I admit to underlining and noting a few really good lines in her, including my favorite, “This is the thing about great literature. It reads like truth and sticks to you forever and lets you know you’re not alone.” What a knockout debut.

Copy received from the publisher. And Then Things Fall Apart is available now.

Want to Go Private? by Sarah Darer Littman

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I didn’t get the internet at home until I was 13. Back then, chatting was what we know as social networking now, and most of my gaming/chatting was limited to a few writing forums on AOL and Neopets (anyone honest would admit to that sort of thing!). But today, most kids have had internet as part of their entire lives, and that’s the topic that Littman chooses to explore in her powerful and important new novel, Want to Go Private?

Abby Johnston is 14, and she’s been best friends with Faith since second grade. They do everything together. The thing is, Abby feels like she’s been growing away from Faith lately, as well as growing apart from her family and the support structures that have always been in her life. They’re beginning high school, and while Faith has taken this opportunity to explore who she is and what she looks like, Abby remains comfortable being the quiet, shy, unflashy girl. Unfortunately, though, this means that their friendship’s been a bit strained lately, and now Abby feels that the extent of her friendship with Faith now exists in their online chats through the new social networking site ChezTeen.

But unlike a lot of people who use these sites to meet new people, the two of them mostly keep to themselves and talk with one another. Abby knows she’s not supposed to talk to strangers, but all of those rules start to change when one guy — BlueSkyBoi (real name: Luke) — begins to take a shine to Abby on this website. He gets to know her through their private ChezTeen chats, and he offers her the sympathetic and understanding ear that no one else in Abby’s life seems to want to lend. Before she realizes it, she’s fallen into the belief that Luke really cares for her and that she knows him well enough to trust that meeting him in person might be a good idea.

But that’s not going to end up being a good idea.

Want to Go Private? is powerful and cautionary tale, perfect for middle and high school students. Although so much of what’s explored here feels like it’s fairly obvious, it’s not. Though today’s teens have grown up with the internet as an extension of themselves, the fact of the matter is so few have real experience with how to detach that digital world from the real, physical world. Moreover, many are unaware how dangerous taking things from the digital world to the physical world can be. Abby, who is going into high school, falls into what so many teens can easily fall into: trusting someone who says and does all the right things online and pursing an opportunity to meet him.

But this isn’t just about what happens when the online goes into the real world, this is about what happens when someone invests too much in their online world, too. Abby gets caught up in feeling very comfortable with Luke — so comfortable, she takes photos of herself without clothing and in vulnerable manners for his pleasure. She does it to please him and to feel like she belongs to someone. Like so many teens today who do things like this and who engage in sexting, Abby dives in with trust and with the belief that she is invincible. The problem is, of course, that she isn’t, and no one really is. And it’s here that Littman’s story becomes cautionary and scary.

Littman sets up her novel quite smartly. It’s told through Abby’s voice initially, and her voice is so likable and relatable, she is easy to immediately buy. I trusted her when she began talking with Luke, and like her, I thought Luke was a nice guy. My adult instincts kicked in, of course, when he began soliciting her for photos and then suggested meeting somewhere, but I could really understand why Abby wanted to do these things. She felt alone and vulnerable, and in talking with Luke, she felt understood and she felt valued, even if it wasn’t necessarily for the right reasons.

Then Littman shakes up the narrative. It’s not just Abby we hear from. We get the chance to hear the story through Faith’s voice, through the voice of Abby’s sister Lily, and through the voice of Billy, a boy from Abby’s school who has a true and genuine crush on her. This structure works well because it gives a great view into how something that seems innocent can have a huge impact on an entire network of people. I found all of the voices here well written and compelling, and they added a lot to Abby’s story. Whereas I believe the entire book could have been told from Abby’s point of view, getting the story from the other characters tightened up the story and provided an opportunity to may not feel entirely sympathetic for Abby. That’s not to say we don’t, but the trick in a story told through one perspective is that we only get that single story; getting it from a couple perspectives here works, since we can see something from a different, less biased eye.

Want to Go Private? is not an easy book to read, as it left me feeling creeped out more than once. Moreover, Abby is taken advantage of in a manner that is extremely difficult to read, and it happens more than once. The thing is, these scenes are absolutely vital to the story line; while they could have been done off page, they wouldn’t have the impact that they have on page. The beauty of this method is that those who are uncomfortable with reading the graphic scenes can skip over them and grasp the impact as much as someone who wants/needs to read them.

My one criticism of the book comes at the end of the story. Once Abby has been through hell and back, she’s been given the opportunity to become a spokesperson of sorts at her school (much in the way she becomes a bit of a spokesperson through the novel itself). In these moments, she feels almost a little too preachy, too experienced. Although her life changed in unimaginable ways and certainly she became an “adult” far before she was ready, I didn’t believe she’d talk to her peers in the manner she did. That said, I think younger readers won’t necessarily believe this is too preachy — it’s sort of the tone they’d expect to hear in a novel like this. Older teen readers, though, will likely not buy into some of the lessons. They picked them up throughout the story and don’t need them laid out so bluntly at the end.

Littman’s book would make a great addition to book discussions or classroom discussions, as there is so much to work with. When I presented this book as a potential title for my teen book group, they were extremely interested in reading it. There is a layer of appeal to this story because this story is one that is such a part of this age group’s lives.

Although there are some hard-to-read scenes, I wouldn’t have a problem selling this one to middle schoolers — I almost think the shock factors would be the lesson many sort of need to see played out to understand how important internet safety truly is. This is the kind of book anyone who wondered “what if” will appreciate. It’s a well paced book, and one that tackles a topic that’s been important for quite a while but not necessarily approached. It’s a title with quite a bit of staying power, as I think the storyline is something that will be relatable to teens for a long time to come. Bonus: Littman’s created an entire website, chezteen.com, to talk about the issues her book presents, and it’s approachable for teens, teachers, and other educators.

ARC picked up at Book Expo America.

Bad Island by Doug TenNapel

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Reese’s dad is forcing his family to go on a boating trip together. This is the last thing Reese wants to do. In fact, Reese has been so upset with his family lately that he’s planning on running away. Now that his dad is dragging him on the family vacation, his plans have to be postponed.

Despite a forecast of clear skies, the sea is choppy and unfriendly. The family’s boat is wrecked, leaving Reese, his parents, and his little sister stranded on a strange island. Luckily, Reese’s father made sure they were prepared for something like this, so they have the supplies to survive, but they still need to find a way off the island. Oh, and they need to somehow avoid being killed by the strange creatures that are hunting them – creatures no one in the family has ever seen before, in real life or in pictures. Accomplishing these goals requires that the four of them work together, not such an easy task for a bickering family.

I appreciated two things most about Bad Island: the creative story and Reese’s family. The narrative is actually divided into two alternating parts. One part follows Reese and his family’s adventures on the island, and the other involves a robot-like creature, his rebellion against his own father, and a possible war against invaders. The two stories are, of course, connected. When all is revealed near the end, I was surprised and gratified by TenNapel’s bizarre and interesting explanation.

It should come as no surprise that Reese and his family do figure out how to work together to save themselves from the island’s creatures and find a way off the island. TenNapel portrays this emotional journey in a moving way, but he doesn’t hit you over the head with it. Best of all, both Reese and his father grow throughout the course of the story. Character growth shouldn’t be just the province of the young protagonist, and it’s nice to see the two contentious family members come together and grow in respect for each other.

I’ve read TenNapel’s other graphic novel for kids, Ghostopolis, and enjoyed it, although I wasn’t especially impressed. Bad Island is a distinct improvement. Ghostopolis was full of gross-out humor that didn’t necessarily add to the story. Bad Island keeps some of that humor that TenNapel (and his readers, no doubt) are so fond of, but it’s toned down slightly and seems much less random.

For example, a thread TenNapel carries throughout Bad Island involves Reese’s sister’s pet snake, which meets an unhappy end during the shipwreck and which she insists on keeping around, despite its growing stench. TenNapel very funnily illustrates this snake with exes for eyes and brown smoke around its body to illustrate the smell – but it’s not just a running gag. The snake, despite being dead, has a part to play in the story.

The art here is wonderful. It’s just the kind of art I love to see in graphic novels – firm lines, bold colors, clear facial expressions, and well-executed action full of energy. The natural environment of the island is a feast for the eyes and the various creatures pulled from TenNapel’s imagination are a delight to pore over. This is a winner.

Copy borrowed from my local library.

Wrapped by Jennifer Bradbury

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The year is 1815, and Agnes Wilkins, a young woman about to make her debut in high-class London society, is attending an unwrapping party. She’s not there to unwrap presents. Rather, she and the other attendees are there to witness – and participate in – the unwrapping of an Egyptian mummy, purchased by a moneyed aristocrat in Egypt and brought back to England to entertain guests.

Agnes is more than a little horrified at the prospect of viewing this, but her mother insists that she attend, since it’s hosted by the season’s most eligible bachelor, Lord Showalter, and she hopes Agnes will catch his eye. She assures her daughter that she need not actually participate in the unwrapping itself, but of course Agnes is forced to when Lord Showalter asks her to be among the first to do so.

Agnes complies, and she discovers an Egyptian artifact hidden within the wrappings. While no one is looking, she secrets the artifact in her dress – Lord Showalter had told her the artifacts found within the mummy could be kept, after all. But when Showalter tells everyone that they got the wrong mummy by mistake, that this one was actually supposed to go to the British Museum and therefore all artifacts needed to be returned, Agnes keeps the trinket.

This sets in a motion a dangerous adventure, since the artifact is not truly an artifact – it’s a false modern-day item made to look as if it were ancient Egyptian. It’s inscribed with French words that indicate it’s a message for a spy – a spy working for Napoleon. Agnes, working with a young employee of the British Museum named Caedmon (whom she quickly falls for, despite being courted by Showalter), deciphers the message and attempts to thwart the spy’s actions – actions that, if successful, could enable Napoleon to conquer all of Europe.

Wrapped is best likened to an adult historical romance/mystery, of which there are legions. In fact, it’s a great teen readalike for the Lady Julia Grey mystery series, which I’m working my way through right now. I had just finished Silent on the Moor before picking up Wrapped, and both coincidentally involve mummies and references to unwrappings as major plot points. I believe Lady Julia would have approved wholeheartedly of Agnes’ adventures.

Wrapped is also a good readalike for Y. S. Lee’s The Agency series (which I love and hope the next volume will be out soon). They’ve both got an intelligent teenage heroine, a well-realized historical setting (although Wrapped takes place mostly in rich London while The Agency delves into the seedier side), a fair amount of danger, and some exciting espionage. They also both require a similar level of suspension of disbelief.

The end of Wrapped indicates that there may be sequels forthcoming, which I would welcome. Agnes is a great character (she taught herself how to speak ten languages), with real faults that complement her almost unbelievable talents (she’s more than a little naïve, which gets her into trouble).

Unfortunately, Wrapped succumbs to the failing of many adult historical mystery/romances: the culprit is a foregone conclusion. It’s such a foregone conclusion that Bradbury doesn’t really bother presenting the reader with more than one possibility in the first place. While detrimental, this doesn’t kill the book. The focus is much more on adventure and the budding romance between Agnes and Caedmon, as well as some fascinating history. Because of this, it’s weaker as a mystery than I would have liked, but enjoyable nonetheless.