Here Be Monsters! An Adventure Involving Magic, Trolls, and Other Creatures by Alan Snow, copyright 2005
I haven't had as much fun reading a story filled with fantastic silliness in ages! Alan Snow's creative and clever first novel, Here Be Monsters! An Adventure Involving Magic, Trolls, and Other Creatures, reminds me of Roald Dahl's books. It's the first volume of The Ratbridge Chronicles, and tells the story of Arthur, a boy who lives Underground and only goes above ground, into the city of Ratbridge, at night to scavenge for food. Other Underlings include Boxtrolls (so named because they wear, you guess it, boxes), Cabbageheads (who wear cabbages on their heads), the Rabbit Women, and Trotting Badgers. One night, Arthur discovers an evil plot is afoot: the forbidden Cheese Guild has been resurrected, and they are out illegally hunting cheeses!
"Strange sounds were filtering through the woods--scrabblings, bleatings, growlings, and, strangest of all, a sound closely resembling bagpipes, or the sound bagpipes would make if they were being strangled, viciously, under a blanket. In a small moonlit clearing in the center of the woods, the sounds grew louder. Suddenly, there was a frantic rustling in the bushes on one side of the clearing, and three large barrel cheeses broke from the undergrowth, running as fast as their legs would carry them. Hurtling across the clearing, bleeting in panic, they disappeared into the bushes on the far side of the clearing, and for a moment, all was still again."
The cast of characters also includes rats, pirates, Willbury the lawyer (a good guy), Marjorie the inventor, Snatch (dastardly ringleader of the Cheese Guild uprising), Grandfather, the Man in the Iron Socks, freshwater sea cows, and crows. I'm not kidding.
The best part, other than the sheer ingenuity of the entire book, is that it is ILLUSTRATED. Yes, Alan Snow drew over 500 cartoonish sketches! How else could we know Wild English Cheeses have two legs on which to trot about? In the tradition of the melodrama, good triumphs over evil, but Snatcher escapes to face his enemies another day. The size of the book (over 500 pages) might appear a little daunting to younger readers, but this would make a great bedtime read aloud due to short chapters and lots of adventure. My only question now is, when is volume 2 coming out?
"Strange sounds were filtering through the woods--scrabblings, bleatings, growlings, and, strangest of all, a sound closely resembling bagpipes, or the sound bagpipes would make if they were being strangled, viciously, under a blanket. In a small moonlit clearing in the center of the woods, the sounds grew louder. Suddenly, there was a frantic rustling in the bushes on one side of the clearing, and three large barrel cheeses broke from the undergrowth, running as fast as their legs would carry them. Hurtling across the clearing, bleeting in panic, they disappeared into the bushes on the far side of the clearing, and for a moment, all was still again."
The cast of characters also includes rats, pirates, Willbury the lawyer (a good guy), Marjorie the inventor, Snatch (dastardly ringleader of the Cheese Guild uprising), Grandfather, the Man in the Iron Socks, freshwater sea cows, and crows. I'm not kidding.
The best part, other than the sheer ingenuity of the entire book, is that it is ILLUSTRATED. Yes, Alan Snow drew over 500 cartoonish sketches! How else could we know Wild English Cheeses have two legs on which to trot about? In the tradition of the melodrama, good triumphs over evil, but Snatcher escapes to face his enemies another day. The size of the book (over 500 pages) might appear a little daunting to younger readers, but this would make a great bedtime read aloud due to short chapters and lots of adventure. My only question now is, when is volume 2 coming out?
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