The Orphan of Awkward Falls

October 3, 2011
“With no friends within a thousand miles and two long weeks to go before the sauerkraut holiday ended and school started, Josephine was certain she was doomed to face excruciating new levels of boredom.” Twelve-year-old Josephine Cravitz is curious, willful, and extremely annoyed about being dragged to a new city every time her professor father gets transferred. This time, Josephine and her parents have moved into the ancient and gothic Twittington House in remote Awkward Falls, Manitoba. Fears of boredom evaporate, however, when she meets her strange, orphaned neighbor Thaddeus Hibble, who lives in a crumbling mansion with a robot butler and a talking cat. Josephine discovers that the cannibalistic Fetid Stenchley has just escaped from the Asylum for the Dangerously Insane and is after Thaddeus. Picture book author Graves’s (Chicken Big) first novel is alternately gruesome, humorous, and action-packed, with moody, full-bleed spot art adding to the grim atmosphere, particularly in the wordless sequences that open and close the book. Graves is a confident storyteller, writing with a polished, Snicket-like drollness that bodes well for his future efforts. Ages 8–12.

August 15, 2011

The creator of such picture books as Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted to Dance (1999) and Three Nasty Gnarlies (2003) dishes up a first novel seasoned with the same delightfully twisted, ghoulish sensibility.

Immediately upon arriving in Awkward Falls, a small Manitoba town known for its canned sauerkraut and its Asylum for the Dangerously Insane ("both," notes the narrator, "to be avoided at all costs, as one was likely to cause gas, and the other, death."), 12-year-old Josephine meets agemate Thaddeus Hibble. Thaddeus is a scientific genius who has lived alone since infancy on an all–junk-food diet supplied by a robot butler and paid for by re-animating the dead pets of local matrons. Together the two are plunged into personal danger and worse at the clutching hands of hunchbacked lunatic cannibal Fetid Stenchley, former lab assistant and Asylum escapee. With aid from a supporting cast of colorful locals, a half-rotted corpse brought back to partial life and a ravening herd of chimerical monsters created in a secret biotechnology lab, Graves crafts a quick-moving plot composed of macabre twists. These are made all the ickier for being presented in significant part from Stenchley's point of view. Wordless opening and closing sequences, plus a handful of interior illustrations, both fill in background detail and intensify the overall macabre atmosphere. The central characters receive just, if, under the circumstances, not necessarily final deserts.

Unfortunate Events galore, served with relish. (finished illustrations not seen) (Melodrama. 11-13)

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October 1, 2011

Gr 4-7-When Josephine Cravitz, 12, and her parents move to Awkward Falls, she explores the crumbling old mansion next door and finds a parentless boy living there. Thaddeus claims to be the grandson of the late Celcius Hibble, a famous local scientist. He eats mainly chocolate and his companions include a robot butler and a cat that he's raised from the dead. It's all relatively harmless-until Fetid Stenchley, a hunchbacked cannibal imprisoned in the town's Asylum for the Dangerously Insane, escapes. He's been locked up for murdering Hibble, who was his mentor, and he is terrifying and unpredictable from the get-go. He's got an insatiable taste for human flesh and a strong desire to return to the scene of his most heinous crime, the mansion that Thaddeus calls home. Crazy surprises abound, and every few chapters a jaw-dropping new twist emerges. You name it, it's in here: cloning, immortality, even a substantial nod to Frankenstein. A little scary, a little funny, and awfully suspenseful, this strange, campy tale will be a hit with fans of Greg Taylor's Killer Pizza (Feiwel & Friends, 2011). Spare black-and white sketches add to the book's frenetic feel. Deliciously creepy.-Mandy Lawrence, Fowler Middle School, Frisco, TX

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