sherwoodreads 's review for:

The Oddmire, Book 1: Changeling, Volume 1 by William Ritter


It’s interesting to me that during the Victorian period, children’s literature was very frequently far more violent than literature for adults. (I’m ignoring potboilers here.) While adult literature was full of manners, ladies and gentlemen, possibly a duel or two (and let’s not forget the casual racism, sexism, etc), children’s literature was filled with dire preachments and warnings of just what happens to bad kids—usually with graphic examples.

I remember one book given to me for my daughter of six over thirty years ago. The grandmother, who was born in the 1880s, passed on to me a book she said she remembered fondly, and that it was good for kids. It was certainly a beautiful book, the cover embossed with ornate git lettering, and a two-toned picture of a pair of kids in Victorian dress on the cover.

I decided to read it first just for fun—I read most things first before handing them off to my six-year-old, but I was sure there would be no unfortunate language in a Victorian children’s book. And certainly no sexual situations I was not ready to explain to a six-year-old who tended to be a close reader.

Well. In the very first chapter, the bad boy (he’s called a bad boy) tortures kittens and puppies, and sets fire to a barn after stealing his father’s tobacco to smoke, which fire burns the family’s horses to death.

That was chapter one!

I’d been boggled that the grandmother said she remembered it fondly—in the years we’d visited I never once saw a book in her house, or saw her reading. And with a steady diet of that in her background, who would blame her? At any rate it did have pretty illustrations, (I bet anything those are what she remembered) but when I glanced through the rest there was far more of the same, including a person of color as a nanny talking in cute dialect with massa and missus in every submissive sentence.

I noped out of that one fast, and into the donation bag it went.

So . . . to the present. There is so very much being published these days onecan identify any sort of trend one likes, but it seems to me that since the late seventies or so, while young adult and adult literature is ever more violent, that for younger kids is much . . . nicer. Whether or not it’s true, I think of it as the Sesame Street effect.

Bringing me to a new book for the younger readers called The Oddmire, Book One: Changeling, by William Ritter.

Overall, I found this book to be such a heartwarming, fun book that I wish I could time-travel to hand it off to my kids, one of whom was a very sensitive reader, and the other who was adopted, and tended to look for books with similar kids.

The story begins with a hapless goblin reluctantly sent to swap a human baby for a changeling. The magical explanation for why it must be—and his reluctance to carry out his job—might be confusing for kids (it was for me, anyway) but I don’t think kids would really care. The fun begins when the goblin is distracted by the sudden appearance of a cat while the goblin child finished his magical transformation, and when the goblin looks back, appalled, he sees two identical infants. So he creeps away in defeat, determined to watch from a distance, and when the goblin surely asserts himself according to his goblin nature, he can finish the job.

When the mother appears the next morning and finds two babies in the crib instead of one, she’s quite boggled. And so are the neighbors. Everyone has to have an opinion, including the local religious leader. (Here I groaned, as religious leaders depicted in books of late all seem to have to be jerks if not outright villains) but lo and behold, there is a general sense of puzzled good will—along, of course, with dire warnings about the Wild Wood adjacent to the village.

And so we make a jump twelve years. The boys are inseparable, curious, and likely to get into mischief, but their mother adores them. Their personalities are different, but likeable and fun. And though Mom knows that one is a changeling, she doesn’t care which.

The boys receive a mysterious note from the goblin, and decide to go on an adventure . . . and the tale kicks into high gear. Along the way we meet magical people, and a companion for the boys, a girl named Fable, who is a terrific character. She’s a crack-up, and surprising in a fun way. What’s more, when Mom wakes up and finds her boys gone, she sets straight out to get them—there is no way she’s not going to protect them.

The narrative voice begs to be read aloud. It’s full of vivid image and delicious wit. The story is fast-paced, exciting, with a strong sense of goodwill about it that I really enjoyed. I would so very much have read this book aloud the years I was teaching grades two through five, though I probably would have finessed the word “geld” which I would not want to have to define for curious kids, and I did wish there was a little less emphasis on the boys’ “pink” skin. The adjective could as easily have been “human” and it would have been a lot more inclusive—like the rest of the story.

But those are small quibbles. Overall, I think Ritter has come out with a winner, and I really look forward to the rest of the series. I’ve also noted this book for holiday shopping for certain young ones in the family.

Copy provided by publisher.