After reading Scrib, I decided to check out his first kids' book, about the great coastal city of MacOongafoondsen (population 21), who mistake a shipwrecked chimpanzee for a Frenchman and charge him with thievery and treason. Emmaline Perth and Young Flurp the Town Fool befriend Samuel Eek (as he's known), defending him in court, searching for evidence that he's innocence, and eventually winding up in old Castle Rock, where the crimson ghost of Angus MacOongafoondsen is said to wander.
The story is an original one (though the "About the Author" mentions that it's supposedly based on a maybe-true story) and the writing is clever. It's not written in a dialect like Scrib, but there are lots of silly plays on words. (For example, Onderdonk the Very Tall Woodcutter is in fact very short; he simply cuts very tall wood.) Fun and charming; one that little kids would enjoy and older kids (and adults) might learn some lessons from.
Fed to jonathan's brain | October 09, 2005
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