Dear Dumb Diary, Year Two, #5: You
Can Bet on That. By Jim Benton. Scholastic. $5.99.
UNICORNE Files, Book One: A Dark
Inheritance. By Chris D’Lacey. Scholastic. $16.99.
Authorial virtuosity comes
in many forms, and if that sounds like too much of a portentous proclamation to
apply to something like the Mackerel Middle School series by Jim Benton, well,
it should, since the series is so fluffy and lighthearted that it practically
floats away each time a new Dear Dumb
Diary book comes out. On the other hand, the “authorial virtuosity” remark
really does fit what Benton accomplishes here, because he has managed to keep
this series going through a dozen books of Jamie Kelly’s first year of diaries
and, now, five books of the second year – and with rare exceptions, the books
have been absolute delights. Yes, they are formulaic, but Benton plays enough
games with the formula so that the short paperbacks are full of twists and
turns that understandably keep kids reading and clamoring for more. The
characters are long since established – the primary ones in You Can Bet on That are Jamie, of
course, plus her permanent frenemy, Angeline, plus her Machiavellian
sort-of-friend, sort-of-fiend, Isabella. And there is the usual supporting cast
of adults and hangers-on. The approach of the books, which are not quite
graphic novels but contain lots and lots of drawings “by” Jamie, is also long
since established – but the specific drawings are weird and offbeat enough,
time after time, so at least some of them are laugh-out-loud funny. Those would
include, in the latest book, the one of customized worms, the outfits Jamie
imagines for Isabella (such as “slabs of wet meat”), and the visual demonstration
that “even though GLOP is gross, GLOP is the basis of all Beauty products.” Then
there are the multiple plots and subplots, which Benton always knits neatly
together by the end of each book. In this case, the big plot has usually
negative Jamie and usually (heck, always) positive Angeline reversing roles in
connection with a bet that Isabella is sure to win, to the heinous destruction
of whoever loses it. But there is also a Web site where postings get a trifle,
um, complicated; and there are also various clothes being made by Jamie’s mom
that all look like, err, monkeyvomit (Jamie and her dad both think so, and both
go through major contortions trying to spoil the “gifts”); and there are
school-meat-loaf substitutes such as “ice creamed corn” and “the super-fun bowl
of just flour and salt”; and there is a debate-related surprise from Dicky
Flartsnutt, who “was BORN TO NERD.” Yes, all of this fits together, and yes,
all of everything in the Dear Dumb Diary
books always fits together; but it all fits together differently (and, in
general, hilariously) every time, and that right there is the reason this
ongoing series is so darn much fun.
Bigger, bolder, brassier and
much less amusing, Chris D’Lacey’s enormous Last
Dragon Chronicles – seven lengthy novels plus an eighth “companion book” as
coauthor – seem to have whetted the author’s appetite for simpler, faster-paced,
less epic fantasy. At least that seems to be so on the basis of the new UNICORNE File series, the first book of
which, A Dark Inheritance, is a
straightforward paranormal adventure whose episodes of silliness appear to be
intentional. It includes an ordinary-for-this-sort-of-book family, with
protagonist Michael Malone; his younger sister, Josie; their mother; and a
father who has mysteriously disappeared while out doing his job “selling
computer programs to medical establishments.” But of course that could not have
been his real job, or there would
have been no story – since Michael, as soon as he starts discovering his own otherworldly
powers, wants to use them to find his father, who was working for the same
outfit (UNICORNE) that now recruits Michael himself. The improbable group’s overdone
name stands for “UNexplained Incidents, Cryptic Occurrences” and, uhhh,
“Relative Nontemporal Events.” Of course, “the first rule of UNICORNE was you
did not talk about UNICORNE, right?” Anyway, Michael comes to the attention of
Amadeus Klimt, the usual shadowy-leader type who is not exactly what he seems
to be, after Michael rescues a dog that is about to jump off a cliff – doing so
in an impossible way that may involve creating an alternative universe within
the multiverse and that incidentally results in Josie turning out to be a very
good flute player. Michael soon learns that he has the power to “imagineer,”
and D’Lacey seems completely oblivious to the fact that this word has been used
by Disney for years to describe what it does in its theme parks and elsewhere.
The basic plot description of A Dark
Inheritance actually points to more humor in what D’Lacey does here than
does the narrative itself; and that calls into question the extent to which the
humor is intended vs. the degree to which it just slips in because of the
multiple manifest absurdities of the story. Oddities pile up rather quickly in
the narrative: an attractive older teen named Chantelle shows up on a motor
scooter to snatch Michael from school for his first meeting with Klimt, then
becomes Michael’s family’s au pair
because that is what Michael says she is; a girl at school, by the name of
Freya, is important because she owns the dog that Michael rescued, except that
she says she doesn’t, resulting in one small mystery among many; and so on. There
are enough serious scenes in A Dark
Inheritance so that it seems D’Lacey wants the book to be read as an
adventure with humorous moments, not a sendup of the whole preteen-to-teen
adventure genre; but it could as easily be read as an elaborate joke, whose
serious elements are introduced as a distraction. D’Lacey is a good enough
writer to deserve the benefit of the doubt; the difficulty with this book is
that it is hard to be sure what that benefit ought to be and where the doubt
lies. With any luck, and probably some skill, the nature of the balancing act
may become clearer as the series continues.
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