Trapped in a Video Game 5: The Final Boss. By Dustin Brady. Illustrated
by Jesse Brady. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Birthday
Cake! By
Lucille Colandro. Illustrated by Jared Lee. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $6.99.
There is an entire subgenre of books
designed for so-called “reluctant readers,” the idea being that kids who just
don’t care for the traditional book experience in our video-saturated age can
be lured into old-fashioned reading by books that are written and packaged
specifically to appeal to them. That often means the books are graphic novels
or are a hybrid form between standard novels and graphic ones – amply illustrated,
but not divided into individual comic-book-like panels through which the
sequencing of events occurs. There is, however, another approach to “reluctant
reader” books, and that is to embrace the likelihood that the reluctance stems
from preoccupation with video games and thus to embrace books that are
themselves a lot like video games. The value and limitations of this approach
are quite clear in Dustin Brady’s Trapped
in a Video Game series, whose conclusion, The Final Boss (that’s “boss” as in super-powerful video game
villain, not as in someone for whom you work) proceeds with all the silliness
and absurdity and mild camaraderie that have characterized the entire series. In
fact, there is little sense of “series” to these books, which are essentially
self-contained adventures despite the occasional cliffhanger: Brady could
easily have ended the series before The
Final Boss or just as easily have extended it for multiple additional
volumes. What he actually does is have the nominal protagonist, Jesse Rigsby,
and his friend, Eric Conrad, go into a video game universe created by the usual
evil corporate bigwig who has used his company, Bionosoft, to devise a virtual
universe named after himself (“Reubenverse,” because his name is Max Reuben).
As The Final Boss starts, it is only 10
minutes before the time when all of reality will be sucked into the Reubenverse
and ruled forever by the evil billionaire because YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO SEEK
ANSWERS TO THE “WHY” QUESTION! JUST FOLLOW THE PATH AND BEAT THE BAD GUYS! Oh.
Right. Anyway, those 10 minutes in the real world equal 10 days in the video
game world because DON’T ASK! So the intrepid kids, who are so undifferentiated
that a reader can swap their names at random and find the story progressing
exactly the same way, have to go through hundreds and hundreds of levels and
earn thousands upon thousands of XP (experience points) and periodically dodge
the occasional Hindenburg (the improbably named robotic remover of game
glitches, which has an annoying habit of identifying Jesse and Eric as glitches
that must be excised). The vast, vast majority of the action is described in
only a few words, and generally without illustrations (this is not a visually driven series, although
Jesse Brady, Dustin’s brother, does periodically offer some art); and the whole
story proceeds with all the super-sped-up pacing of, well, a video game – only,
actually, faster. Eventually, of course, the good guys win, friendship
triumphs, the real world is not destroyed, the Reubenverse does not come into
full-fledged existence, and reluctant readers somehow learn that it is
important to spend their time with thoroughly unchallenging books about video
games instead of with the video games themselves because YOU WERE TOLD NOT TO SEEK
ANSWERS TO “WHY” QUESTIONS AND HAVE REPEATEDLY DISOBEYED. DISCUSSION
TERMINATED.
While some book series have a definitive
end, others sequences go on and on – but feature individual definitive endings. The “Old Lady” books by Lucille
Colandro and Jared Lee are designed this way: each builds, through a series of
strange ingestions by the Old Lady, to a twist ending that pulls together the
mild mystery of why the Old Lady swallows those specific items. The books are
based on the nursery-rhyme song, “I know [sometimes “There was”] an old lady who
swallowed a fly” – which, in “house that Jack built” fashion, builds and builds
as more and more items are swallowed, ending when she swallows a horse and
“she’s dead, of course.” Colandro and Lee keep things much lighter than that,
though. They also sometimes create sequences that are too obvious to be fully
entertaining, which is what happens in There
Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Birthday Cake! The title gives away the
whole plot – and the poem’s meter is wrong, too, while it would have been right
(and the book would have had at least a little bit of mystery) if the title had
simply been, “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Cake.” Given the fact that
kids will know from the cover of this board book exactly what is going on – and
that there will be no surprises in the swallowing sequence itself, which
involves items including candles, balloons and confetti – this is one of the
weaker books in the series. It will be fun primarily for pre-readers and
perhaps very early readers, who will enjoy the amusing pictures of the lady’s
tremendous mouth and may have additional fun watching the reactions of the
little black dog who is a fixture in Lee’s series illustrations even though it
has no specific role in the stories. The other use of this book could be as a
bright and happy-looking birthday gift: the final page says “Happy Birthday”
and shows a party table loaded with presents, decorations and (of course) a
cake, and the book’s cover features glitter that makes the whole thing look
very festive. The amusement level here is mild, but for some very young
children, it will be enough.