Wed Wabbit. By Lissa Evans. David Fickling Books. $17.99.
Shards #1: Sisters of Glass. By Naomi Cyprus. Harper. $16.99.
Preteen readers, ages 8-12, have many
fictional lands they can visit and many fictional journeys and adventures they
can have in them – with many different things to learn and many different ways
of learning them. This is true even though the stories’ outcomes are, by and
large, fairly similar in their level of uplift and in the way they conclude
with protagonists learning about their strengths and weaknesses. Just how
different the tales can be is shown in comparing a hilarious and inventive new
book by Lissa Evans with a much more serious and much more formulaic one by
Naomi Cyprus. Evans’ is called Wed Wabbit
and revolves around a red rabbit, sounded out with the “w” sound by four-year-old
Minnie (short for Minerva), sister of the central almost-11-year-old character,
Fidge (short for Iphigenia). Fidge’s dad, whom she resembles physically and in
her neat, orderly and organized personality, has died, so the family includes
only the two girls and their decidedly ditzy mom, whom Minnie resembles. Minnie
is obsessed with book-and-toy characters called Wimbley Woos, garbage-can-shaped
things that come in various colors with differing personalities and abilities:
“Yellow are timid. Blue are strong./ Gray are wise and rarely wrong.” And so on
through green, pink, orange and purple – seven colors in all. The Wimbley Woos
speak only in verse, just one irritant for Fidge when she meets them. Yes,
meets them. Minnie is injured in a car accident (not terribly seriously), so
Fidge has to go live for a time with Uncle Simon and Auntie Ruth, whose son,
Graham – Fidge’s cousin – is an extreme hypochondriac, hilariously spoiled, very
smart in an in-your-face way, and altogether unpleasant. At Graham’s house,
Fidge soon falls down some cellar steps – along with Graham himself – and the
two find themselves in the actual land of the Wimbley Woos. Yes, this sounds
like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
and it does have some of that resonance, but it is much funnier in a slapstick
way (if less thoughtful and elaborate). The Wimbley Woos, it soon develops,
need Fidge to rescue them from something – which turns out to be an
exaggerated, evil version of Wed Wabbit. While Fidge struggles to figure out
what is going on, Graham – separated from Fidge after the cellar-steps incident
– is dealing with his “transitional object,” a rather rigid and dogmatic (but
sensible) plastic carrot from a supermarket giveaway that calls itself “Dr.
Carrot” because the small platform on which it stands says “DR” (standing for the
store, “Douglas Retail”). The Lewis Carroll elements of Wed Wabbit merge surprisingly well with some from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as Graham
(who, of course, eventually learns the error of his intelligent-but-misguided
spoiled-brat ways) and the sensible, clever Fidge try to understand their
predicament and figure a way out of it. The charming stuffed Ella Elephant,
rather given to over-dramatization, adds additional humor to the proceedings,
and the Wimbley Woos’ riddles prove crucial to the plot: Fidge and Graham need
to solve them and deal with Wed Wabbit in order to get home. The oddity of the
Wimbley Woos, the well-balanced characterizations of Fidge and Graham, and the
consistently funny writing and sure pacing of Evans’ book make Wed Wabbit weally wonderful.
Also well-written but much more
conventional in plot – and more strongly directed at preteen girls rather than
at both girls and boys – Cyprus’ Sisters
of Glass is the first entry in a series called Shard. The sequence’s title makes perfect sense, since it is a
shard of glass – in the form of a mirror – that lies at the heart of a
traditional prince (here, princess) and pauper, good-vs.-evil plot. Princess
Halan is heir to a kingdom where magic is crucial – it is even called the Magi
Kingdom, no reference to Disney apparently intended – but she herself lacks
magical powers, even though every ruler before her has had them. She dreams of
escape from the palace and of living somewhere where she will not constantly
feel the pressure of her inadequacies and inabilities. Into her life, quite
unexpectedly, comes Nalah Bardak, a Thauma (magic user) who lives in a land
where magic is strictly outlawed on pain of penalties ranging up to death. Like
other Thauma, Nalah lives quietly: she helps her father make glass knickknacks
to sell at a local market. But these are not as well-crafted as the ones made
by the family of her friend Marcus Cutter, because his family is rich and has
connections that allow them to use some magic to produce beautiful Thauma
crafts. Hoping to better her own family’s lot, Nalah secretly accepts a
commission from an old family friend named Zachary Tam, who wants an illegal
mirror to be re-created. Nalah succeeds – but as soon as he gets the mirror,
Tam kidnaps Nalah’s father and escapes to another place through it. So Nalah,
aided by Marcus, goes after Tam on a rescue mission. This is how Nalah and
Halan meet – their names being a reversal of each other is an overly obvious
clue to their intertwined importance and to what is going on in their worlds. The
tale is told in alternating chapters, but the voices of Nalah and Halan do not
sound sufficiently different for this common device to be particularly
effective: the girls’ backgrounds stand in for any genuinely differing
personalities that Cyprus might otherwise need to develop. On the other hand, the
determination and independence that both girls possess will be attractive for
the intended readership, and Cyprus does a good job of creating settings that
differ from the usual vaguely medieval European ones so common in fantasies for
young readers: here there is a distinctly Middle Eastern flavor to the
geography. But the basic story of similar characters from two different worlds,
joined by unexpected events and needing to fight the good fight for their
respective homes, is nothing new, and Cyprus handles it competently but without
any really unusual angles. Sisters of
Glass is an effective enough genre entry to deserve a (+++) rating, but it
breaks no new ground and is content to remain in the same action/adventure territory
where many fantasy novels for preteens, and indeed for adults, reside comfortably
but without much distinction or distinctiveness.
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