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Ten-year-old Fidge is dealing with a lot, from her beloved father's death a year ago to being the only practical person in a flamboyant family to her four-year-old sister Minnie's refusal to pronounce Rs because it's cuter that way and frequent demands that Fitch read her favorite book, The Land of the Wimbley Woos, a cloying picture book written in clunky verse about a magical land of color-coded, dustbin-shaped people.
But when Minnie is hospitalized in an accident, Fidge and her phobic-of-everything cousin get trapped in the Land of the Wimbley Woos... which has been taken over by a monstrous version of Minnie's favorite stuffed animal, Wed Wabbit.
An uneven but often extremely funny children's book. The best parts were Fidge's outrage at having to deal with actual Wimbley Woos and their terrible rhymes and hunger for hugs. The parts where it played the story straight, as a more sophisticated version of the picture book's message of love and learning, were fine but a story I've read a lot. The opening chapters, in which Fidge blames herself for her sister's accident and it looks for a while like Minnie's going to die, felt like they came from a different and much gloomier book than the rest of it; the understated way it dealt with their father's death worked much better with the overall tone.
The book was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, and has some interesting reviews on Goodreads as a result from people who normally don't read fantasy ever and were appalled at having to read one if they were supposed to read the entire slate. This surprised me as a number of classic children's fantasies were Carnegie Medal winners or nominees, but I guess it's gone more toward realism, or at least very very serious fantasy lately. A couple rather hopefully suggested that the book could be interpreted as Fidge having a nervous breakdown and imagining the whole thing!
(I don't think this reading is supported by the text, as her cousin is also involved and also has objective personality growth as a result; I guess maybe he could have changed as a result of observing her total breakdown or just coincidentally, but that seems unlikely.)
Wed Wabbit
But when Minnie is hospitalized in an accident, Fidge and her phobic-of-everything cousin get trapped in the Land of the Wimbley Woos... which has been taken over by a monstrous version of Minnie's favorite stuffed animal, Wed Wabbit.
An uneven but often extremely funny children's book. The best parts were Fidge's outrage at having to deal with actual Wimbley Woos and their terrible rhymes and hunger for hugs. The parts where it played the story straight, as a more sophisticated version of the picture book's message of love and learning, were fine but a story I've read a lot. The opening chapters, in which Fidge blames herself for her sister's accident and it looks for a while like Minnie's going to die, felt like they came from a different and much gloomier book than the rest of it; the understated way it dealt with their father's death worked much better with the overall tone.
The book was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, and has some interesting reviews on Goodreads as a result from people who normally don't read fantasy ever and were appalled at having to read one if they were supposed to read the entire slate. This surprised me as a number of classic children's fantasies were Carnegie Medal winners or nominees, but I guess it's gone more toward realism, or at least very very serious fantasy lately. A couple rather hopefully suggested that the book could be interpreted as Fidge having a nervous breakdown and imagining the whole thing!
(I don't think this reading is supported by the text, as her cousin is also involved and also has objective personality growth as a result; I guess maybe he could have changed as a result of observing her total breakdown or just coincidentally, but that seems unlikely.)
Wed Wabbit
