Under Wildwood

November 1, 2012

Gr 5-8-In this sequel to Wildwood (HarperCollins, 2011), it becomes clear that Prue's and Curtis's adventures will span numerous volumes. Curtis stops his bandit training to rescue Prue from a black fox Kitsune assassin. Prue then abandons her halfhearted attempts to reassimilate into her family. Her friend, the Elder Mystic of the North Wood, believes unrest in the South Wood provisional government has placed all Wildwood in danger. She asks Prue to reestablish balance in the Forest and sends her some rather cryptic clues as to how to go about it. Prue and the unwilling Curtis end up in Wildwood's caverns where they receive help from the Mole City. Meanwhile, Curtis's sisters see glimpses of Wildwood when a cruel orphanage owner sends them into the Impassable Wilderness to try to unpeel its secrets. Meloy's declarative style combined with vivid imagery makes the descriptive passages jump out at readers. Ellis's illustrations evoke a neo-Currier and Ives style that works well with the forest setting. The numerous plot threads intimate a Dickensian approach to story management. There are almost too many things going on at once, and the book raises more questions than it answers. While not as compact as Trenton Lee Stuart's The Mysterious Benedict Society (Little, Brown, 2007), Meloy's offering is a match for its clever writing, and the numerous types of creatures in the wood will keep readers' attention as will the dramatic tension that fills every corner of this Empire Strikes Back-type sequel.-Caitlin Augusta, Stratford Library Association, CT

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2013
Reunited, Prue and bandit-in-training Curtis set out to restore Wildwood's true heir. Meanwhile, an avaricious entrepreneur forces a group of "Unadoptable" children to breach Wildwood's magical boundary. Wry humor, suspense, and distinctive fantasy elements make this lengthy novel a quick read. Ellis's detailed illustrations (both black-and-white spot art and color full-page tableaux) capture the human and animal characters in all their quirky glory.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

August 1, 2012
Grades 4-8 To follow his familiar but pleasurable fantasy epic Wildwood (2011), where else did Meloy have to go but down (and by that we mean underground)? Twelve-year-old Prue is still recovering from her adventure into the magical forest outside Portland, Oregon, when a new danger brings her back to travel alongside her bandit-in-training pal, Curtis. Though Meloy is tireless when it comes to whimsical details, advanced wordplay, and bone-dry humor, the duo's journey feels much as it did in the first volume. Happily, an intertwined plotline yields dividends: two sisters are dropped off by their parents at the Joffrey Unthank Home for Wayward Youth, a steampunkish secret sweatshop run by a titan of industry obsessed with using the children to gain entry into the Impassable Wilderness. Soon the sisters are below Wildwood, where an army of moles mistake them for demigods. Naturally the plots intersect; naturally there's an inspirational uprising; and naturally this is a light-handed delight for kids who like their animal wars to break occasionally for a cup of mint tea. Bonus: Ellis' 84 full-page and spot illustrations are as delicate and adorable as before. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Movie rights to the best-selling Wildwood were snapped up quickly, and as long as Meloy's band, The Decemberists, remains in the spotlight, so will awareness of this series. Big author tour planned, too.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

August 15, 2012
Droll and ornate, elegiac and romantic--the sequel to Wildwood (2011) brings readers deeper into and under the pine-scented, magical world tantalizingly close to Portland, Ore. Prue is drawn back to Wildwood by herons who rescue her from a trio of terrifying shape-shifters, and there she is reunited with Curtis, who stayed to enjoy the exhilarating life of a bandit-in-training. Attacked at their secret hideout, the bandits vanish. Adrift, Curtis and Septimus the rat join Prue on a quest that takes them under Wildwood, a setting straight out of M.C. Escher with a hint of Hieronymous Bosch. In the Industrial Wastes above, Curtis' grieving parents search for him after parking his sisters at an orphanage. In this Dickensian institution, children labor to make machine parts, the owner dreams of extending his industrial nightmare into the Impassable Wilderness he sees but can't reach, and his partner, Desdemona, former B-movie actress in Ukraine, dreams of Hollywood glory. Indulging a free-range imagination, Meloy mulches his verdant wilderness with wildly eclectic cultural references--real (Macbeth, Moby-Dick) and un- (Tax Bracket magazine, Lego replicas of Soviet-era statues). The incomparable Ellis more than rises to the challenge--her sly, wistful, abundant illustrations provide an emotional through line. Reflecting on her Wildwood experience, Prue "learned to not consider the minutiae of things, but rather take each episode as it came." Take Prue's advice and enjoy the ride. (Fantasy. 10-14)

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