The Uncanny Express (Bland Sisters book 2) by Kara LaReau

So last week I got lovely book mail--I was a Winner of a prize package to celebrate the release of The Uncanny Express, by Kara LaReau (Abrams, middle grade, Jan. 2018), the second book about the Bland sisters Kale and Jaundice.  Here's a photograph of my treats, using the blandest upholstery in my home as background.  I especially like the little fake moustache, which I have posed ala an Edward Gorey bat between the books....

And today, while home with a sick kid, I treated myself to the Reading.  And such was my reading experience that I'm going to do something I don't usually do.

Usually when I write a review of a children's book (not that I ever write reviews much of grown-up books) I try to cast my mind back to the halcyon days of my own youth, asking myself if little Charlotte would have liked the book, and wondering if "kids today" would like it.

To heck with that.  I read The Uncanny Express as a grown-up, and loved it as a grown-up, and that's a valid experience too!  I enjoyed it so much for two reasons.

1. It was full of very fun Agatha Christie allusions, that tickled me greatly.  A crime (?) is committed on a train full of passengers with secrets.  Kale and Jaundice, the Bland sisters, are passengers on the train, swept up by the self-styled Magique, Queen of Magic (who might or might not be their Aunt Shallot), a magician who's determined to make a comeback in the world of magic (the stage kind, not the fantasy kind, although that one trick at the end.....).  When on the course of the train journey she disappears (murdered?) a  detective manifests on board the train, and Kale and Jaundice are now swept along in the path of his detecting as he questions all the other passengers.  Very much Murder on the Orient express!  Lots of fun!

This is clearly an adult reaction, and I have no clue how kids who don't know Agatha Christie will react.  Probably many will think it's funny in its own right, and than come to A.C and find her book a knock off of something they already love.

2.  Kale and Jaundice were not immediately appealing to me in their first outing.  They are, indeed, bland.  But the shells of their blandness are cracking in earnest here, and emotional depths and physiological realizations are bringing them to life and making them loveable.  I truly care about them now.

This is the reaction of me, a mother, an identity so strong in me now that I can't undo it.  Quite possibly young readers will be able to take the girls at face value and appreciate their utterly over the top neuroticness, and empathize with them on the shared experience both real and fiction kids are currently living of growing up and questioning the childhood ways once taken for granted.  That would be fine too.

But in any event, I really enjoyed the book, which is very nice for me!

Thanks, Kara, for the prize package!  I'll be looking forward to book three eagerly.