Bound To Stay Bound

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 Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods
 Author: Valente, Catherynne M.

 Publisher:  Margaret K. McElderry Books (2022)

 Classification: Fiction
 Physical Description: 401 p., ill., 21 cm

 BTSB No: 901689 ISBN: 9781481476997
 Ages: 8-12 Grades: 3-7

 Subjects:
 Fantasy fiction
 Magic -- Fiction
 Forests and forestry -- Fiction
 Mother-son relationship -- Fiction

Price: $22.58

Summary:
When his mother accidentally kills a Quidhunk in the woods, Osmo Unknown must embark on a quest to find the Eightpenny Woods--the mysterious kingdom where all wild forest creatures go when they die--and make amends.


Reviews:
   Kirkus Reviews (02/15/22)
   Booklist (+) (02/15/22)
 The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (00/04/22)

Full Text Reviews:

Booklist - 02/15/2022 *Starred Review* In the town of Littlebridge, nestled in a valley and against the Fourpenny Woods, Osmo Unknown yearns to be somewhere—­anywhere—else. Instead, the 13-year-old feels his future already written without any consideration given to what he wants. But that was before his hunter mother accidentally killed a Quidnunx, a trickster beast that could be one of Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things, breaking an ages-old treaty between humans and Quidnunx that states, “Take one of ours and we take one of yours.” That one, of course, is Osmo. Thus begins the adventure he so craved, but not remotely in the fashion he imagined: he must marry the ghost of the murdered Quidnunx. Valente crafts a mirror world of sorts, where animals speak and are mashups of those the boy knows (his companions are a bombastic skadgebat—a skunk-­badger-wombat named Bonk the Cross—and a fiercely solitary pangirlin—a pangolin-human girl named Never). Together, they must travel through the land of the dead and collect a list of impossible items before finding Osmo’s bride in the Eightpenny Woods. This imagination- and description-rich tale is for those enamored by The Phantom Tollbooth and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It’s threaded with laugh-out-loud humor and danger, but ultimately, it’s a call for empathy and overcoming adversarial attitudes, which feels exactly right in these divided times. - Copyright 2022 Booklist.

Booklist - 02/15/2022 - Copyright 2022 Booklist.

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