The Squickerwonkers by Evangeline Lilly and Johnny Fraser-Allen

The Squickerwonkers by Evangeline Lilly and Johnny Fraser-Allen
Buy The Squickerwonkers by Evangeline Lilly and Johnny Fraser-Allen at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Children's Rhymes and Verse
Reviewer: John Lloyd
Summary: A luxurious book to teach the young not to be so needy and intent on the instant gratification that revenge can bring, with just a couple of minor hiccups over structure.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 42	Date: November 2014
Publisher: Titan Books
ISBN: 9781783295456
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Selma is a young girl who finds a strange attraction on the edge of a fair – a large gypsy caravan-styled contraption, which she enters, alone but for her shiny red balloon. She appears to be alone, until nine marionette puppets suddenly appear on the stage within, and a disembodied voice introduces them all to her. They are the Squickerwonkers, and as we are about to see, they can reveal someone's entire character with the simplest of actions…

Looking back on this book it's clear to see there are a couple of things as regards structure you can only really get away with books of this nature, and for audiences too young to perhaps see it as a problem. Basically, for this story we don't need each and every Squickerwonker to get his or her own introduction, but get them we do, which is fun and amusing, given the rhyming patter of the story, until we come, as I say, to reflect afterwards, and realise how abrupt the turning points of the narrative are.

Still, they are perfectly suited to the style of book this is, and they're not the kind of thing you can spend more than a verse over, so it's not a major problem. The style of book is that of the old-fashioned moral tale – a dark little happening that is both grounded in the ancient lesson yet still reads as fresh, and one that is able to inject much that's new into many aspects (the fairy wagon, the circus, the magical stage show with an audience of one) we may well have thought tired of.

As for the verses, they're pretty much great. The book's littered with design, picking out the words in large print, but they just bounce off the page and on to the tongue – this is a real pleasure to read aloud. It's almost a narrative in Limerick fashion, although the first line doesn't rhyme with anything else, so ABCCB, and sometimes A has an internal rhyme as well, so it's clearly been crafted. The artwork was proof of that, anyway – while not really to my taste, the great full-bodied and full-scale pages and extra sepia cameos Fraser-Allen gives us all go towards the mood of the piece, that of a friendly chill for the under-nines.

Produced with all the puff pieces and blurbs you would want from the artist's colleagues at WETA in New Zealand, where he's been concept artist, and written by a Hollywood actress, this smacks of a vanity project, in all but execution. As it's produced here it leaves gaping gaps at the end, where it's assumed we take a breather and await the sequel, so you don't get much reading for your bucks, but what you do get is quality. It's a little bizarre all round, but in amongst the many lessons it conveys is that bizarre can be good – and this is very good.

I must thank the publishers for my review copy.

This would fit perfectly on a shelf alongside Seen and Not Heard by Katie May Green - itself a great repository of all-ages Gothic.

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You can read more book reviews or buy The Squickerwonkers by Evangeline Lilly and Johnny Fraser-Allen at Amazon.com.

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