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Summary
Summary
Augie Hobble lives in a fairy tale--or at least Fairy Tale Place, the down-on-its-luck amusement park managed by his father. Yet his life is turning into a nightmare: he's failed creative arts and has to take summer school, the girl he has a crush on won't acknowledge him, and Hogg Wills and the school bullies won't leave him alone. Worse, a succession of mysterious, possibly paranormal, events have him convinced that he's turning into a werewolf. At least Augie has his notebook and his best friend Britt to confide in--until the unthinkable happens and Augie's life is turned upside down, and those mysterious, possibly paranormal, events take on a different meaning.
Author Notes
Lane Smith was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on August 25, 1959. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration from Art Center, College of Design in Pasadena, California. He moved to New York City and was hired to do illustrations for various publications including Time, Mother Jones, and Ms..
He is a children's book author and an illustrator. His titles with Jon Scieszka have included the Caldecott Honor winner The Stinky Cheese Man, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs, Math Curse, and Science Verse. He wrote and illustrated Madam President, John, Paul, George and Ben, The Happy Hocky Family, The Happy Hocky Family Moves to the Country, It's a Book, and Grandpa Green.
His other high profile titles include Hooray for Diffendoofer Day! by Dr. Seuss and Jack Prelutsky, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip by George Saunders, Big Plans by Bob Shea, and James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. He also served as conceptual designer on the Disney film version of James and the Giant Peach, Monsters, Inc. and the film adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! In 2017, he was awarded the Kate Greenway Medal for children¿s book illustration for There is a Tribe of Kids.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
What is happening to Augie Hobble? Despite obvious artistic talent (he liberally illustrates this summer-of-transformation story with his own drawings), he has flunked creative arts class and must redo his final project. He's also obligated to work spearing garbage at Fairy Tale Place, a run-down amusement park managed by his father. Plans to while away the summer with his best friend evaporate and a rendezvous with Cinderella, a park character played by a fellow middle schooler, results in a possible werewolf attack. At this point, Augie's comic but conventional story takes unexpected turns. Pets go missing. Eerie entries appear in Augie's journal. Hair sprouts in odd places. Is this puberty or something more sinister? A major tragedy occurs for which Augie feels responsible, but two-time Caldecott Honoree Smith, in his first novel, does an impeccable job of introducing heartbreak while keeping the mood light. Augie is a good-hearted kid whose wry humor makes him a companionable narrator. Readers may feel as disoriented as Augie when Smith shifts from recognizable ground to add an otherworldly dimension, but it works because Augie deserves an ending that makes him whole again. Ages 8-12. Agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
A wacky, pun-riddled story of amusement parkdwelling Augie changes tone rather abruptly when a tragedy befalls Augie's best friend and Augie believes it's his fault. But everything becomes both light and bizarre again when paranormal happenings help Augie handle his bullies. In the picture-book creator's debut novel, Smith's signature illustrations alternate with more rudimentary drawings attributed to Augie. (c) Copyright 2015. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Smith huffs and puffs and blows the roof off his first novel. Augie Hobble is in for a wicked summer painting polka dots on the toad-shaped toadstools at his father's rundown theme park, Fairy Tale Place, while dodging bullies and retaking his failed creative arts class in summer school. There are some bright spots, though, in the form of his best friend Britt and the flirtatious new Cinderella talent at the park. What starts as a quirky summer read quickly morphs into something nearly impossible to explain, and that's not just a reference to Augie's belief that he is turning into a werewolf. Plot elements that include groan-worthy humor; paranormal mysteries; special, special federal agents; a desert chase; and sock-in-the-gut tragedy are interspersed with Augie's illustrated brainstorming journal of wacky projects for summer school. Augie documents his summer with a Polaroid camera that was left in the park's lost and found way back in the 1990s it takes cool pictures that look like Instagram. If this novel were normal, fans would be disappointed. Give it to readers who wish Bridge to Terabithia had been written by Polly Horvath. Bravo, Lane Smith!--Dobrez, Cindy Copyright 2015 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Children witness fantastical events at a theme park and a mysterious carnival in two middle-grade novels. CIRCUS MIRANDUS By Cassie Beasley Illustrated by Diana Sudyka 292 pp. Dial. $17.99. (Middle grade; ages 8 to 12) RETURN TO AUGIE HOBBLE Written and illustrated by Lane Smith 283 pp. Roaring Brook Press. $16.99. (Middle grade; ages 8 to 12) SO ALL THE world's a stage, and we are merely players hoofing upon it? I bet Shakespeare picked up that nugget at Stratford-upon-Avon Middle School. Middle school ushers in the Narcissistic Age, a mannerist phase that comes between the magic years of learning to read and the disheartening Enlightenment that occurs between early high school and, say, midlife crisis. An Enlightenment that has to take in the reality of death. In different ways, and with equally surprising success, two new novels for middle-grade readers raise the curtain on such mysteries. Mind, the curtain is not just a reviewer's figure of speech - what is a figure of speech but a small theatrical event, anyway? In both novels, the spectacle of live performance sets up considerations of mortality. Cassie Beasley's smoky "Circus Mirandus," a beguiling first novel, begins when Ephraim Tuttle, near his deathbed, writes to a circus artist called the Lightbender, hoping to call in a favor promised some decades earlier. The Circus Mirandus is - well, what is it? A carnival of the child's mind? An apparition slipped sideways out of one of P. L. Travers's stories of Mary Poppins? It's more than a symbol, but I doubt it files tax returns. The Circus is an ineffable arena of magic that appears on the sidelines of children's lives, in the selvage plots that surround all towns. It seems a kind of curing ground where certain children can tune to a sense of numinousness in their own lives. But beyond this I cannot say. The Circus Mirandus is a mystery locus, and much is both unexplained and cunningly undescribed. Make what you will - I think that's the point - of the circus, and of your own life. Ephraim's grandson, Micah Tuttle, is a fifth grader struggling with a school project while a disagreeable great-aunt comes to help out. Micah makes common cause with his partner, Jenny Mendoza, who cannot believe in the magic of the circus but gamely listens to Micah's protestations of faith about it. The novel alternates the story of Ephraim's childhood experience of the Circus Mirandus with Micah's attempts to cash in the wish that his grandfather has deferred claiming. What strikes me as notable is the confidence in tone. Beasley relies on reticence in describing magic; the whole book has the quality of an extended dream, a David Lynch episode as seen through a happier camera. But reality vests in Beasley's exquisite writing about tiny, observed moments. "As the minutes dragged by, the quiet started to itch." "Micah felt like a kite with a cut string." "'Now,' murmured Grandpa Ephraim. 'Let's be here together for as long as we have.... Then, when the time comes, we'll all let go.'" The incomparable Lane Smith, the author and illustrator of "Grandpa Green" and the illustrator of "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales," stomps triumphantly into the middleschool playground with his first novel, "Return to Augie Hobble." The nonchalant first-person narrative drives along with short sentences, short paragraphs, silliness both of language and situation - and Smith's antic, anarchic illustrations. Hugely normal and appealing Augie Hobble (like Micah, also late on a school project) lives on the periphery of his father's rundown amusement park, Fairy Tale Place, where employees are kitted out in character. But something supernatural is hinted at in the jokes: "Everyone knows the urban legend of Walt Disney being frozen, so if you give a show a title like 'Disney on Ice' you're just asking for it." I won't spoil the plot - it's too good - but I'll say that intimations of werewolf possession are all the more arresting when told in tones of schoolboy snark. (Who can blame Augie? He attends Gerald R. Ford Middle School.) "Last scene of all,/That ends this strange eventful history,/Is second childishness and mere oblivion." So, in "As You Like It," Shakespeare concludes Jaques's speech about the many parts a human may play in one life. Yet oblivion has not been the fate of his poetry. Middle schoolers have much to learn about the benefit of words of blessing from those who have died. These two books magically light the way from stage to stage. GREGORY MAGUIRE is the author of "Egg & Spoon" and a forthcoming novel for adults, "After Alice."
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-6-Smith's first novel begins with a scattered and zany atmosphere. That's entirely appropriate, given its setting at a struggling New Mexico amusement park. It may, however, present as much of a problem in attracting and retaining readers as Fairy Tale Place has in luring in customers. Augie's failed his Creative Arts class at the aptly named Gerald R. Ford Middle School and must complete a project over the summer. His story is interspersed with his cartoon ideas for the assignment, which make it clear that Augie lacks decisiveness more than creativity. These pieces, along with frequent insertions of Smith's illustrations, break up the text in ways which will appeal to kids who enjoy art-heavy, journal-form novels. About a quarter of the way through, intersections of the folkloric and the paranormal combine to give a more coherent direction to the narrative, despite our view through the scrim of implausibility. Werewolves, UFOs, and communications from the world beyond are prominently featured, but it's the fate of Augie's best friend and Augie's struggle to cope with responsibility for it that deepen the book and make it more touching than it initially seems. VERDICT Readers who persevere through the broad comedy will find a story with heart within.-Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Library, NY (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The award-bedizened illustrator offers up his first novel.Mildly offbeat setting aside, it all starts on recognizable ground. Son of the manager of a seedy theme park dubbed Fairy Tale Place, Augie faces both bullying from local thug Hogg Wills and summer school because he's failed Creative Arts ("Who fails Creative Arts?"). Also, dazzling classmate Juliana has joined the park's colorful cast of costumed "hosts" as Cinderella, and along with allergy-prone best buddy Britt, he discovers that building a treehousein a tree, at leastis harder than it seems. Readers set by this opening for a moderately amusing summer idyll are in for a series of unsettling shocks as Smith then proceeds to vigorously knock expectations askew. He chucks in sudden death, a rash of missing pets, initially garbled but increasingly coherent and revealing messages from the great beyond, clairvoyant visions, robbery, lycanthropy and even mysterious government agents. It takes Smith to keep what could become a hot mess percolating happily along toward a just conclusion. Portraits, collages, hand-drawn comics and other illustrations done in a range of styles add characteristically postmodern notes to this roller-coaster ride. Great fun, with hardly a trope or theme left unspun. (Fantasy. 10-13) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
