Boomtown

Most of the reviews in this blog will be positive. After all, I don't see much point in writing about a book I didn't enjoy when I could spend that same time reading one I like a whole lot better. Every once in a while, though, there are books that must be reviewed for one reason or another and this is one of them. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it.

Boomtown by Nowen N. Particular (a.k.a. Marty Longe) is aimed at 8-12 year old boys and looks very promising. It's full of inventions, explosions, silly stuff, and bumbling adults who are rescued by children. Silliness is a core virtue in our household and I grew up with a brother who was forever inventing things and blowing things up so I was all set for a fun read but was disappointed.

For starters, the narrator/main character, Arthur Button, is an adult who doesn't have a clue to what's going on in his family or his new town. Since everything is observed and recorded through his eyes, the reader doesn't have a clue either. Two of the Button children are full of mischief and adventure and are the right age for readers to identify with but we only get to see what their father knows about their various escapades and thus end up missing out on a lot of the fun. We get bits and pieces of adventures and story lines but no real sense of involvement.

There's also not much in the way of plot development. Lots of things happen in the story and we're told about lots of wonderful inventions (like hen grenades and inflatable sky campers), but most of the bits and pieces feel jammed in there. It's as if the author has all these fun bits he wants to get into his story and isn't willing to sacrifice any of them for the sake of telling the story well. If this were a movie, it would be filled with special effects and explosions, very low on character development, and almost without plot - not my kind of film.

The illustrations were promising. I like the air of authenticity the faked photos and newspaper clippings give to the text. There are, however, some gaffs, the worst being a supposedly authentic ancient Chinese note with the text running in rows from left to right, and punctuated as if it were English. Many of Nowen N. Particular's readers will know that Chinese writing goes in columns from top to bottom, organized right to left.

If I were part of the editorial group for this book, I would suggest that the author cut out at least half of the escapades, string what's left into a proper story line, and tell it from the point of view of one of the children. Use the leftover bits in the next book. Be careful with the language, too. Over the course of just two pages, we had a sequestered jury and a venerable lawyer who liked to pontificate and decry. Rather challenging vocabulary for 8-14 year olds.

Boomtown, by Nowen N. Particular was published by Thomas Nelson in 2008. ISBN is 978-1-4003-1345-7.