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The Goblin Companion by Brian Froud & Terry Jones
Up until now our scanty knowledge of goblins has been based on speculation, but we now know a great deal more, thanks to an important archaeological find of forty-three notebooks created by Dashe, a goblin portraitist. These notebooks are sketchy, but years of painstaking reconstuction by the eminent part-time goblinologist Brian Froud, backed up by years of dry research by his colleague, the noted academic Terry Jones, have amounted to an illustrated Who’s Who of the goblin world.
Brian Froud -The Human Artist
Little did Brian Froud think, when he undertook this work, that he would encounter so much opposition from the goblins themselves. Suffice it to say that he found it necessary to don armour. But even then he found himself unable to deal with the concerted attempts of goblins to wreck his work by forcing him to drink more and more really good wine, and then, while he was otherwise occupied, crawling across his pages with inky feet.
Prematurely aged, the artist finally gave up in despair and abandoned his work to the goblins themselves … and to the Pouilly Fuissé….
Dåshe
It is thanks to the quick pencil of Dåshe that we have any portraits at all of any of the goblins. It was the discovery of Dåshe’s notebooks (forty-three in all) containing lightning portraits of his friends and contemporaries that enabled Brian Froud, the human artist, (see page 121), to render the representations of the goblins that you see in this volume.
Agnes
Agnes is one of the many scavenging goblins that inhabit the Wide Tract of Rottenness that was formed after the Great Collapse of Good Governance in the Labyrinth (see note on Bübl, page 18).
Agnes is capable of collecting and carrying seventy times her own weight in discarded economic theories and abandoned political objectives. The empty promises, hollow opinions, and worthless public statements that litter the Wide Tract are all snapped up by this voracious creature. She then delivers them to Gürdy the Burnisher (see page 66), who polishes them up as good as new, if not better, and resells them to the ambitious and unscrupulous of all ages.
Septimüs
Septimüs is a typical Night-Troll. He steals silently and stealthily around people’s gardens and under bridges when the stars and moon are hidden by clouds and night is thickest. He is a terrifying and unnerving sight, or rather he would be if you ever saw him, but he is so silent and so stealthy and his visits so brief that nobody ever knows he’s there or even not there (see Bregg the Poet’s “Ode to a Twark’s Egg,” page 79)… and that’s the worrying part.
Phester
A very unpleasant goblin. Being very small, he is capable of climbing into an adult animal’s open sore, entering the bloodstream, going once around the system and out again, leaving a small trace in the heart that creates the impression of being in love – but with no particular object for your affection. Most unsettling.
More of these critters here
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The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex
It all starts with a school essay.
When twelve-year-old Gratuity (“Tip”) Tucci is assigned to write five pages on “The True Meaning of Smekday” for the National Time Capsule contest, she’s not sure where to begin. When her mom started telling everyone about the messages aliens were sending through a mole on the back of her neck? Maybe on Christmas Eve, when huge, bizarre spaceships descended on the Earth and the aliens – called Boov – abducted her mother? Or when the Boov declared Earth a colony, renamed it “Smekland” (in honor of glorious Captain Smek), and forced all Americans to relocate to Florida via rocketpod?
In any case, Gratuity’s story is much, much bigger than the assignment. It involves her unlikely friendship with a renegade Boov mechanic named J.Lo.; a futile journey south to find Gratuity’s mother at the Happy Mouse Kingdom; a cross-country road trip in a hovercar called Slushious; and an outrageous plan to save the Earth from yet another alien invasion.
Fully illustrated with “photos,” drawings, newspaper clippings, and comics sequences, this is a hilarious, perceptive, genre-bending novel by a remarkable new talent.
I gave this book a 4.5 out of 5. this was a book i picked up at random from a sale and bought because it has pictures. i’m alway wary about reading books with teenage girls (american ones particularly) as the main character because of the usual pitfalls (e.g girl said to be feisty but ends up being rescued anyway, sappy love angles, crass teen language passed on as witty). one thing I like about this is that I can forget that gratuity is a girl. I guess it helps that she is 11 and not 16. and she did end up saving the world herself. i am not that big of a fan of sci-fi and this being a book about alien invasion, I expected it to be really cheesy and campy and it is, but the tongue in cheek humor works because it the same stuff I cringe at in the sci-fi cliches that i always cringe at in the sci-fi stuff i come across with.
I like how Tip and JLo the Boov started from this uneasy truce between human and alien invader to a friendship that lasted a lifetime (which here lasted a 100 years). The quiet thoughts between all the running around, hiding and dodging alien guns in a levitating car where I always picture Tip looking up the sky were poignant in that simplistic childlike way that for me always cuts deeper than cloying words of so-called inspirational novels (major reason why i don’t read coelho, et al.). One such instance was when Tip started to realize that the Boov are also a people.
Invasion being the running theme here, there’s the white man stealing land from the indians. the boov stealing the planet from humans. the gorgs taking the planet from the boov. even within the boov, the water dweling boovs grabbed the land from the forgotten boovs, those who lived in the land after being exiled. Coming from a colonized country, this struck a chord. Invaders always refer to the action as “discovering”. Conquered people are always thought of as inferior and looked upon as savages. In a few simple word, the author Adam Rex sum it all up via JLo’s comic: “the forgotten are kindly asked to leave, because the forgotten are needed elsewhere”.
And most of all, I like that part about the cat. As Tip herself puts it, “And as far as pets go, a cat is a nice thing to have”. And as far as friends go, a Boov can be a nice thing to have.
