Alex and the Ironic Gentleman by Adrienne Kress

May 30th, 2008 at 2:35pm |

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Audience: 9 and up

Rating: B+

Synopsis:

If you liked Series of Unfortunate Events, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Princess Bride, or Tale of Despereaux, then you’ll like this book too. When her uncle’s doorknob store is broken into and her beloved sixth grade teacher is abducted, ten and a half year old Alex sets out on an adventure to reclaim her teacher and find his family’s buried treasure. Along the way she meets many, many unusual characters. From the Extremely Ginormous Octopus, to Coriander the Conjurer, to Lord Poppinjay, no one that helps or hinders Alex on her journey could be considered typical. This book is funny and fast paced.

Chatter:

(Spoiler Alerts! ) The author’s style reminded me a lot of the narratives of the books I mentioned above. I like when an author talks directly to the reader – as long as it’s well done- and this book is very well done. The voice that the author improves is distinct. Even her acknowledgement page had the same tone as the rest of the book. (And couldn’t you understand the type of ‘thank you’ she wished – I could!)

I loved all the crazy characters – although maybe it would have been better if there were less of them and they were more fully developed. Why were the Daughters of the Founding Fathers’ Preservation Society so weird and evil? They were really the worst bad guys in the book – way worse that Captain Steele, although perhaps not worse than Senseless or the doctor. But we never got a motivation for their strangely mean ways. The same with Lord Poppinjay – I wanted to know more about his talking refrigerator (and not-talking self).

These characters seem ready for novels of their own… who knows, maybe they’ll get them. Kress has another book set to come out January 13, 2009 called Timothy and the Dragon’s Gate (you can preorder it now). Hopefully these characters will pay cameos in Timothy’s book as well – I know that at least SOME of them will because after a little digging around I found out that the Ironic Gentleman (now a floating school) and Alex will be a large part of the book.

Hooray for sequels told from a different character’s perspective!