Page 45 Review by Stephen
Intriguing edge-of-your-seat wonder, with both bright, barley-blonde, mid-summer sunshine and eerie-glow midnight phantasmagoria!
And it's not just me, for this has now been successfully field-tested on a couple of young gentlemen around the age of 11 who were both thrilled.
There's a woeful lack of knees-dirty adventure amongst all the albeit terrific full-on fantasy for young 'uns, but this is just that, firmly in the real world of family life, friendship, baseball, barns and bedrooms before the otherworldly creeps stealthily in like creaking floorboards.
Or 100 cupboards uncovered - after some hacking - under the bedroom plasterwork.
Let's hope none of your young ones start any ill-advised, unsupervised DIY in gleeful emulation.
Henry's come to Kansas, picked up from the bus stop by his Aunt and Uncle. Their truck doesn't have back seats, so it's bottom-bumping, head-clonking trailer time! Their homestead is terrific: lots of bare wood, banisters, stairs and rafters up in the attic. It is, Aunt concedes, just a little rickety, though. (I call it character.)
"Down there's the cellar.
"Never trust the toilet, but there's the plunger.
"The fridge will make funny noises at night... I swear it talks to itself.
"The door at the end is stuck. Lost the trick of the lock when grandfather died."
Weirdly, the window won't work, either.
Their cat is ultra-territorial / hostile, but his cousins have better manners - some of the time.
"Do you ever think you'll see your parents again?"
"Stop it, Anastasia."
"What? Do you even want your parents to come back?"
Oooh, what's happened to Henry's parents?
No time to worry about that now. The scratching's started on the other side of his bedroom wall... Can those cupboards be opened? If so, what lies on the other side? Henry's going to need some help!
Yes, more of this, please!
More scraped knuckles, sprained wrists, scuffed knees. More real-world relationships, and more comics cartooning that doesn't rely on mindlessly, unambitiously aping the animation du jour.
