Bound To Stay Bound

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Booklist - 07/01/2019 Preteen orphan Humboldt “Bolt” Wattle’s sharp longing for family leads him into some peculiar pickles after he’s suddenly summoned from the Oak Wilt Home for Unwanted Boys to the remote fishing village of Volgelplatz, where he’s bitten by fanged werepenguin Count Chordata—a shapechanger whose very name causes bystanders to scream and faint every time (every time) it’s mentioned. Distracted though he may be by a new, voracious appetite for raw fish, Bolt has but three days to prevent both his own permanent transformation and an invasion by the Count’s army of mind-controlled penguins. Getting help and hindrance in roughly equal measures from local residents (notably Annika, an aspiring young bandit, and a group of orca worshippers led by a baguette-wielding Prince of Whales), he ultimately prevails in a preposterously strung-out climax that also sets the stage for a veritable barrage of family revelations and reunions. Blithely tweaking genre tropes and clichés as he goes, Woodrow will leave readers with a taste for such diversions—not to mention a taste for fish sticks—howling at the moon. - Copyright 2019 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 08/01/2019 Gr 3–6—Bolt Wattle has lived at a miserable orphanage for as long as he can remember, but he dreams that his parents will someday return for him. When he is abruptly adopted by Baron Chordata and sent to far-away Brugaria, he wonders if his family is claiming him at last. In Brugaria, all is not well: Bolt arrives at a dusty, crumbling castle after an alarming encounter with some villagers, and bands of rogue penguins roam the landscape. Worse, far from the father figure Bolt has dreamed of, Baron Chordata appears to be a boy no older than Bolt himself. At the stroke of midnight the Baron bites Bolt in the neck, and Bolt discovers the Baron's terrible secret: he is a werepenguin, and now, so is Bolt. Bolt has three days to reverse the transformation and stop the Baron from leading the penguins into battle against the villagers, or he will be cursed to remain a werepenguin forever. This slapstick story is light on horror, character development, and logic, but heavy on gross-out humor and fish stick jokes. Bolt is occasionally assisted by Annika, the world's fiercest bandit whom nobody has ever heard of, but neither she nor any other character experiences significant growth. Readers who enjoy the trappings of horror without any genuine chills or thrills are the best audience for this story. VERDICT An additional purchase where goofy humor circulates well.—Misti Tidman, Mansfield/Richland County Public Library, OH - Copyright 2019 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

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