Boggled!: A Plague of Bogles by Catherine Jinks

"Shhh," Alfred hissed when he spotted the grate. "That's the one." He pulled Jem back from the door. "She'll have met her end in there, poor lass." Alfred rummaged through his brown bag. "Bogles like drains," he said, quietly. "Never think any hole is too small for a bogle." He had a small leather bag in one hand and his spear in the other. "Can you sing?"

"I can sing," Jem confessed, "but not like Birdie."

"Step into the ring of salt only when I tell you. Don't move till I move. And whatever you do, lad--do not touch the salt on your way out o' the ring."

Jem began to sing. "Brandy or rum I tipple in, with my darlin'..."

What was that smell? The bogle seemed to pour through the doorway like a wave of black treacle. Then, as it gathered itself into a kind of crest--rearing up behind Jem--a huge, gaping hole appeared in its body. The bogle was starting to encircle him. Glancing down at the slimy noose that was about to tighten around his ankles, he took his eyes off Alfred for a moment.

"JEM! NOW!" screamed the bogler.

It ain't over till it's over. With Birdie taken in by the wealthy folklorist, Miss Eames, studying for a career in the opera, and Jem working for a respectable grocer, Alfred Bunce is fresh out of apprentices and figures it's high time to retire from bogle-slaying. But when Jem hears about the disappearance of scullery girl Flossie in a pub built over a dungeon of Newgate Prison, he locates Alfred and begs him to hunt down the bogle beneath the bar.

As they soon learn, it seems that many bogles have plagued the area around Newgate. It's a plague of bogles, and Alfred and Jem reason that there must be a reason for the relatively rare child-eating monsters to congregate in one area. No child is safe in the neighborhood, and reluctantly, Alfred has to enlist the help of Miss Eames and Birdie to help him clear the area of bogles. Birdie is more than a bit bored with her middle-class life, and Miss Eames can't resist pursuing her research, so the four of them begin their bogle eradication mission.

But even their skills seem to be up against more than they can handle. There must be something drawing ever more bogles to Newgate, and Jem suspects his old employer, Sarah Pickles, for whom he thieved for seven years, is involved. He does some sleuthing on his own and learns a horrible truth. Sarah is in cahoots with the ruthless butcher John Gammon, a.k.a Salty Jack, who runs a powerful protection racket in Newgate Square. Sarah is now a "baby farmer," one who takes in the babies of poor working girls for pay, with a generous cut for Salty Jack, but who spares herself the trouble of caring for them by heartlessly feeding them to bogles in the cellars, where they disappear without a trace. With a abundant diet of tender babies at hand, the plague of bogles is explained, but even the streetwise Jem is staggered by the evil of Pickles and Salty Jack. He sets out to spy on Sarah Pickles to gather proof for the police, but falls into her trap and winds up chained in her cellar, perfect bogle bait himself.

Catherine Jinks' second book in this series, A Plague of Bogles (How to Catch a Bogle) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), almost outdoes her initial tale with non-stop suspense, wry humor, and a well-fleshed out glimpse of Victorian London populated by vivid, unforgettable characters that could have come straight out of Dickens. Jinks is a master storyteller and a verbal artist who sketches out her setting and characters with infinitely fine strokes deeply steeped in British folklore, all the while keeping the tension building toward a slam-dunk climax.

With a a deliciously Dickensian slang glossary that dutiful eighth graders plowing through required reading of Great Expectations would love and a teasing touch of Jinks' next sequel appended, this second book in the trilogy has it all--deadly danger in deep, dark sewers and the dungeons of Newgate Prison, resilient orphans determined to survive, and a cast of colorful adult characters, from the Fagan-esque Sarah Pickles to a murderous butcher with all the cold-blooded guile of a Mafioso chief. This novel is a deftly plotted Gothic mystery, a page-turning thriller that grabs the reader like a hungry bogle and doesn't release until the final word is gobbled down.

Jink's initial book is How to Catch a Bogle, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014, 2013) just out in a brand-new paperback edition. (Read my review here.)

Unsnarling the Strands: A Tangle of Knots by Lisa Graff

Mason squinted,. "You certainly are Talented," he told the man.  "Do you..." He searched for his manners. "... sell many knots then?"

"Heavens, no....  It's a horribly useless Talent, tying knots.  But no, I find myself with knot-tying."

"Well, the only knot I've mastered is the one to tie my shoelaces," Mason admitted. "Every other one just looks like a tangled mess to me."

The man in the gray suit thought about that.  "Well, that's the thing about knots, isn't it?" he replied after a moment.  "If you don't know the trick, it's a muddled predicament.  But in fact each loop of every knot is carefully placed, one end twisting right into the other in a way you might not have expected.  I find them rather beautiful, really."

Reading through the twists and turns of Lisa Graff's A Tangle of Knots (Philomel Books, 2013) is rather like untying a knot.  The strands seem hopeless enmeshed, each one disappearing into the knot and reappearing later on the other side, but it the reader follows each piece of puzzle through the knot, prying it from the mass, the individual threads appear.

In Graff's tangled plot, an slightly off-kilter world appears, one in which most people have a special Talent. Orphan Cady's Talent is making the perfect cake to please anyone she meets. Miss Mallory, the head of her children's home, has the Talent to intuit the proper adoptive parents for her charges, with the exception of Cady, which is why she is the sole resident as the story begins. Neighbor Dolores Asher, whose Talent is knitting, fast and fabulously, has three children--Will, whose questionable Talent is for getting lost, Zane, whose only occasionally useful Talent is spitting, and Marigold, one of the Fair, those who are still waiting for their Talents to appear. Then there are the sinister Owner of the Lost Luggage Emporium, who has the Talent to float above the ground, and as is soon revealed, a more sinister Talent for stealing others' Talents, which he keeps in a collection of canning jars, and his kindly delivery man Toby, who is both lonely and Talent-less.

Add to these strands a sometimes-toothpick, sometimes-hairpin, sometimes-priceless dinosaur bone, four vintage baby blue suitcases, the lost recipe for the world's most delicious peanut butter, and the mysterious man in the gray suit who sometimes travels by hot-air balloon with a grin that suggests he knows more about the world than he is letting on, and author Graff has a tangle of beautiful loops to unwind as each person's fate is realized as the knots are undone.  Like untangling a knot, following the twists and turns and loops of this plot take full focus from the reader, but this enchanted knot is well-worth the unwinding for readers who prefer their fantasies populated not by monsters and spirits, but by real persons trying to reconcile their fates with  their own purposes--and finally sorting themselves out to be what they were meant to be all along.

"The magic of Savvy meets the complexity of When You Reach Me in this "blithe magical puzzle," says The Wall Street Journal, citing the notable books by Ingrid Law and Rebecca Stead. Kirkus'  starred review says, "Subtle and intricate, rich with humor and insight, this quietly magical adventure delights."  And as an additional incentive, author Graff includes her well-tested recipes for each of Cady's undeniably delicious-sounding cakes.

The Bogler's Girl: How to Catch A Bogle by Catherine Jinks

Alfred stood to the left of the fireplace, his salt in one hand, his staff in another. He didn't speak to Birdie, who took up her usual position inside his magic circle. Though she'd turned her back on him the little mirror she was holding gave her a clear view of everything behind her: Alfred, the fireplace, the gap in the ring of salt.

She had to take only one step--across the white ring on the floor--and she would be safe. But she could not do it yet. Not until they'd lured their quarry out of its hiding place. Not until they'd baited their trap.

Suddenly Alred gave a nod. It was her cue. The blood was thundering in her ears. When she began to sing, however, her voice was clear and calm.

Birdie is the Bogler's Girl--and proud of it. Life for an orphan in nineteenth-century London is hard. Working for pennies as a mudlark digging for valuables in the stinking muck on the shores of the Thames, rat-catching in the sewers, or being a beggar or cutpurse for some wicked master to stay out of the workhouse, all promise a hard life, and a short one, and our Birdie knows she has it good.

Bogling is honest work, and she is proud to be the one and only 'prentice to Alfred Bunce, the best in the business, and her clear, sweet voice and childlike prettiness make her perfect bogle bait. Alfred has steady work; when servant children go missing near a well or fireplace or sewer opening, people are glad to pay six shillings a bogle and expenses to have Alfred kill the child-devouring beast with his shower of salt and his lance. And when the bogle is drawn out of his lair, Birdie has the nerve and quickness to stay alive in her job.

Slowly, silently, something dim and dense surged out of the chimney and onto the hearth, in a cloud of soot that blurred its hulking silhouette. It had eyes as red as rubies and black scales like chips of slate. Birdie even caught a glimpse of arms unfolding.... Then Alfred sprang his trap.

He lunged forward. Birdie did the same.

Alfred and Birdie's fame reaches the ears of Miss Eames, a wealthy folklorist of a certain age who fancies the chance to witness the bogles recounted in her ancient texts in action. Alfred reluctantly agrees to take her along on his next job, a case in which a couple of thieving boys, under the management of the wicked Sarah Pickles, have disappeared during a heist in a doctor's house. What the boglers and Miss Eames find inside Dr. Morton's sinister house reveals that he is himself a necromancer, one who claims dominance over bogles and other dark forces, and when Birdie and Alfred are tricked into doing a bogling job inside a graveyard, they are astonished to find themselves captured, chloroformed, bound, and left inside a tomb-like chapel, under the power of the evil Dr. Morton. Can Birdie's quick mind and steady nerves save them from a fate perhaps worse than a bogle?

Catherine Jink's forthcoming How to Catch a Bogle (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013)  is a rammer-jammer of a page-turning tale, loaded with deliciously dark Victorian-era ambiance, and with a delightfully feisty young heroine who survives by wit and courage and a lot of street savvy. Jinks, the top-selling author of the picaresque Evil Genius books, is the magical mistress of a sort of supernatural adventure solidly rooted in a realistic setting, and the world she creates for the talented Birdie McGraw promises much fantastical adventure for her character in a planned trilogy in which Birdie may have to choose whether to become a revered bogler or a lark-voiced star of the musical stage. With a cast of colorful and sometimes shady characters that even Dickens would have envied, these are books that should become classics of their genre. I can hardly wait for the next one!

With raves and starred reviews all around from the critics, this book should not be missed by middle readers who fancy a few scares and a lot of humor. ""This is top-notch storytelling from Jinks, full of wit, a colorful cast of rogues, and delectable slang," says Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus concurs, adding "... high style, offering a period melodrama replete with colorful characters, narrow squeaks and explosions of ectoplasmic goo."  Goo, glorious goo, and a glossary of London slang, too. What more could a fantasy fan want?

Puppets and Phoenix Stones: Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz

"She is real," Parsefall said. "Grisini must've--"

Lizzie Rose's fingers tightened. "He couldn't have, Parse. People can't do things like that. Magic spells--and evil magicians--"

"It's 'er!" insisted Parsefall. "Grisini did her."

But I am Clara, Clara wanted to protest, and then the word puppet struck home.

"People can't change into puppets," argued Lizzie Rose.

"Look at the gewgaw she's wearin'!" said Parsefall.

"Her birthday locket!" gasped Lizzie Rose. "She showed it to me!"

Yes, thought Lizzie Rose. It was Grisini."

In a foggy, grimy Victorian London, two orphans are in thrall to an evil puppeteer. Little Parsefall is wizened, mysteriously missing one finger, but his tiny hands can manipulate Grisini's puppets with as much magic as his master's. Lizzie Rose has little facility with the puppets, but raised as a much-loved child before losing her parents, she plays the violin beautifully and speaks well. But both children fear Grisini, an aging, and dark and menacingly malevolent master who grudgingly feeds them little and allows them chilly shelter in his dank, decaying lodgings in Mrs. Pinchbeck's boarding house.

But when the pampered but loveless surviving child of the rich Wintermute family sees their show in the streets, she threatens a tantrum unless she can have the puppeteers at her twelfth birthday party. Somehow, Clara forms a bond of friendship with the two indentured orphans at the party, and when Lizzie and Parse learn that Clara has been kidnapped, they are immediately convinced that Grisini, who has fallen under suspicion before, is behind the deed.

And then, hidden in Grisini's musty trunk they find a new puppet, one that is a a perfect replica of Clara in to her birthday dress and her locket, which opens to a miniature of her dead twin, even down to the tiny lock of his hair inside. Suddenly they believe they understand the magnitude of Grisini's evil power and fearfully realize that only
can do something to save Clara.

But there is more to Grisini's malevolent plan than they realize. Grisini is immersed in a struggle with an evil magic more powerful than his own--the witch Cassandra, whose phoenix stone necklace gives her power even over him. What Grisini does not know is that the fire within that stone is destroying Cassandra from the inside out. Longing to rid herself of the very source of her power, she knows that the stone cannot be given away nor discarded, only stolen, and in a tangled scheme she draws Lizzie Rose and Parsefall to her dark, towered mansion in the hope that one of them will filch the necklace from her.

The two orphans escape from London with Clara's puppet, but Grisini tracks them down and follows after them, hoping to regain Clara and revivify her for her ransom and also to steal the phoenix stone for himself.

Like a master puppeteer herself, two-time Newbery author Laura Amy Schlitz skillfully manipulates her characters into a dramatic denouement that will leave readers stunned and yet satisfied, in her Splendors and Glooms (Candlewick, 2012). Reviewers have been universally unable to describe this gripping tale without calling it Gothic and Dickensian, and for good reason. Schlitz's setting, with the cold itself palpable, is seen only in a dim and gloomy light, grimy and filthy with manure in the streets and smelly and steaming with life, while her characters exhibit all of the dark places in the human heart as well as the surprising virtues of love, loyalty, courage, and redemption. Every character has his or her flaw, but except for Grisini, who remains true to type, his greedy and fateful flaw bringing about his own destruction, all, even Cassandra, are at last redeemed by their own transcending human grace. Said the New York Times Book Review," "Filled with heart-pounding and heart-rending moments, this delicious, glorious novel is the work of a master of children's literature."

Recipient of the 2013 Newbery Honor Award for this novel, Laura Amy Schlitz was awarded the Newbery Medal in 2008 for her Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village.

What's Not to Like? Dear Life, You Suck by Michael Blagdon

Dear Life,

You SUCK!

See you on the flipside.

Sincerely,
Cricket

With a name like Cricket Cherpin, with a mother who murdered his little brother in the bathtub, and a drug dealer dad,  Cricket has a few strikes against him.  Add to that his frequent suspensions for fighting at school and what could safely be called an irreverent attitude for all institutions, including the Catholic orphanage where he's lived for eight years, and you can see why most of the adults in Cricket's life know that he means trouble.

But they do care about Cricket. At the children's home (hereinafter entitled The Prison), Mother Mary Mammoth keeps trying to convince him of the errors of his ways, and at school the principal (a.k.a. La-Di-Da LaChance) and his English teacher, (alias Foxy Moxie) keep trying to keep him at school long enough to graduate. When Moxie ("sexy in a hippie fruitcake way") assigns the class to write a letter of complaint to anybody, Cricket decides to go big and take it to the top, so he addresses his beef to life itself, hoping that the hint at suicide will send his teacher into hyperdrive mode.  Instead, she red-pencils in some peculiarly pedagogical remarks:

Wonderful choice of recipient!!!  Excellent start, but needs more detail. 

Specificity!

What in particular sucks? 

What do you imagine awaits you on the flipside? 

Regards, M. Lord

Cricket has his work cut out for him with Moxie's request for specificity. By his own code, Cricket is ethically in the clear: he only fights to defend the "little ones" from the orphanage and anyone else who becomes the victim of a bully, particularly senior letterman Buster Pitswaller, whose greens Cricket is finally forced to clean  on school grounds. Suspended for a week from school and grounded to Prison chores, Cricket has to confine his drinking and collecting drug bills for local dope dealer Grub to the wee hours of the night when he can sneak out. His penance labors during the day under the benevolent watch of Caretaker, who also tutors him in self-defense skills, give him plenty of time to think about his future. At first it seems he has only three post-Prison options:

1. Boxer (Caretaker provides training and booking)
2. Drug Dealer (Grub needs a full-time associate)
3. The Flipside (the local cliff is available for jumping)

In Cricket's mind the choices are equally unpleasant, but despite his negative view of himself and everything else, he's got some good luck in his corner--his English teacher Moxie, who thinks he's a gifted writer, Cheesecake LaChance who keeps giving him yet another chance, Mother Mary, who refuses to give up on him despite it all, the "Little Ones" who love his fanciful stories and look to him for protection from the rest of the world, and even the lovely Wynona, Buster's ex-girlfriend who seems to find him handsome and intelligent. Slowly, despite all the junk of his life, Cricket's balance begins to tip toward other options.

In his Dear Life, You Suck (Harcourt, 2013) Scott Blagden has in Cricket Cherpin a character who is profane, cynical, nihilistic, and somehow totally likable, one who has every reason to see the world as a cruel, self-mocking place, no matter where he turns. And yet, Cricket can't seem to come to the point of finding the flipside on the downside of that cliff.

I believe in something. I'm just not sure what. I think the way life started, that Big Bang thing, is a clue. Like maybe God's the explosion, and we're the particles, and the purpose of it all is to get back together.

Like his fictional predecessor, Holden Caulfield, young adult readers will be pulling for Cricket Cherpin to get his own particles together, to emerge from his seventeenth year "with all his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact."

Kirkus Reviews says, "Dear story, you rock."