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Book Review: “Wildwood” by Colin Meloy

When I saw this book at the public library, I thought it had a striking design. This, including loads of quirky but beautiful illustrations, is the work of Carson Ellis, who has also decorated books by Lemony Snicket and Trenton Lee Stewart. As for the author, I thought his name sounded familiar. Only later, after I had brought the book home, did I connect it with the alternative rock band the Decemberists, of which Colin Meloy is the lead singer and songwriter. If you’re familiar with his music, you may not be surprised to learn that hints of a political message and of a New Agey, earth-magic type of spirituality perfume the pages of his book. But it’s also a thrilling fantasy adventure featuring a couple of kids from St. Johns, Portland, Oregon, who find a strange, magical, perilous world hidden within a short bicycle ride of their city.

One fine day, Prue McKeel is pedaling around town with her baby brother Mac in tow, when the sky is darkened by a murder of crows. Catching Mac up in their talons, they carry him away across the river, past the Industrial Waste, and into the Impassible Wilderness where Prue’s parents have always warned her never to go. She goes anyway, to save her brother. A nerdy neighbor named Curtis tags along. Almost immediately they are separated, when Curtis is captured by a pack of coyotes who walk on their hind legs, wear military uniforms, and speak English. Prue falls into her own adventure, hitching a ride with the postmaster as he makes his rounds through a country where humans, birds, and animals live together as equals.

What Prue finds in the civilized South Wood is a police-state ruled by an increasingly paranoid Governor-Regent. The arrival of an outsider, together with the news she brings about crow kidnappers, threatens the stability of the regime. While the secret police starts rounding up Avians and anyone else who worries them, Prue escapes on the back of an eagle, searching for someone to help her rescue her brother.

Meanwhile, the coyotes bring Curtis to their mistress, the deposed Dowager Governess, who was kicked out of the South Wood after she went mad and started working black magic. Now she is working on getting her power back, starting by conquering the Wildwood with her canine minions. The next step of her revenge is to enact a terrible sacrifice, unleashing an ancient, slumbering force that will annihilate the entire Wood. At first tricked into helping her, Curtis is imprisoned the moment he sees what the Governess is up to.

And so it is up to two children from the outside world to save one baby and an entire fantasy land from a coyote army, an insane lady, and a ritual of death. Obviously they will need allies. Curtis will have to break out of jail. Prue will need to elude constant attempts to kill her, capture her, or trick her into going home empty-handed. And the two of them will have to persuade birds, bandits, farmers, and mystics to set aside their differences and fight together against their common enemy.

In this book the whimsical pictures of Ms. Ellis, combined with the author’s flair for sharp imagery, create a world of immense originality and delightful strangeness. It gives the impression at times of being heartwarmingly adorable or tummy-ticklingly cute. And then it turns on a dime and presents scenes of shocking violence, the terror of battle, suspense, danger, grievous loss, and burning injustice. Often within a single scene, its characters move from charming to menacing, from silly to noble, from weak to strong. It combines fairy-tale concepts, like talking animals and wicked witches, with invocations of gods, goddesses, or the force within earth, air, and trees. The latter examples prompt me to issue an Occult Content Advisory, for Christian parents to keep in mind as they decide when (or if) to introduce their kids to this fantasy world. And though it comes to a very satisfying ending, it is the first book in a trilogy called the Wildwood Chronicles. The other two books are Under Wildwood and Wildwood Imperium .

Buy the Book! The Authors’ Website Recommended Ages: 12+

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A Dark Lyricist Turns to Tales For Children

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By Stephen Heyman

• Oct. 11, 2011

PORTLAND, Ore. — Can you trust Colin Meloy with your children?

The brain behind the brainy rock band the Decemberists is changing course, putting his musical pursuits on hold to write a trilogy of children’s novels with his wife, Carson Ellis, an illustrator. They contain, in drips and dribbles, one of Mr. Meloy’s favorite motifs.

That would be blood. The dark colors in the first volume of “The Wildwood Chronicles,” titled “Wildwood” and recently published by Balzer & Bray, should not surprise anyone familiar with the band’s playfully roguish songbook, which includes, amid seafaring yarns and espionage procedurals, blanching descriptions of rape, torture and the serial murder of children.

The book, intended for ages 9 to 12, brims with grimly comic violence. Coyotes dressed in Napoleonic uniforms train musket, cannon and bayonet on woodland bandits, talking birds and an industrious rat named Septimus. Many perish in the fight, although not nearly as many as Decemberists fans might be accustomed to.

Mr. Meloy reined himself in, not only because he was writing for a young audience, but also because he had to keep his story sufficiently peopled for 541 pages. “In a book you have to consider the repercussions,” he said. “In a song, after three and a half minutes, it’s done. So you can kind of kill people off willy-nilly.”

On Sept. 18 “Wildwood” made its debut at No. 7 on the New York Times best-seller list for children’s chapter books. Claire Dederer, writing in The Times, called the book “a richly satisfying weave of reality and fantasy,” while also noting that “sometimes things get almost too Portlandy, as though the characters from the brilliant TV satire ‘Portlandia’ have gotten lost in Narnia.” Laika Films, the Portland animation studio that produced “Coraline,” plans to transform the first book into a stop-motion feature.

Mr. Meloy’s heroine is one Prue McKeel, 12, a bookish, bike-loving vegetarian whose brother is kidnapped on a crisp Portland afternoon by a murder of crows. As if this weren’t bad enough, the crows fly Prue’s brother deep into a wooded no man’s land, the Impassable Wilderness.

This wilderness is actually an enchanted version of Forest Park in Portland, a 5,100-acre tree-huggery in the hills above the Willamette River, just northwest of the city center. The park is filled with giant Douglas firs, ferns of prehistoric proportions and, every so often, a pair of amorously coiled banana slugs.

“They’re totally doing it,” Mr. Meloy said, grinning while stepping over two slugs. He and Ms. Ellis took an amble through these woods at the end of summer to discuss “Wildwood.” They did not need to travel far. Their modest home, a rebuilt 1920s farmhouse partially furnished in Ikea, is steps from the park boundary.

Portland is Decemberists country, and the band’s music plays reliably inside restaurants and hotels here. But some of the city’s more thoroughly inked and pierced music lovers greet Mr. Meloy’s name with a restrained groan, suggesting that his narrative exploits may be verging on shtick. Nevertheless, the last Decemberists album, “The King Is Dead,” shocked music industry insiders by climbing to the top of the Billboard charts, the culmination of a kind of mainstream success that began with the band’s switch in 2005 to Capitol Records from the indie label Kill Rock Stars.

Despite this high note, Mr. Meloy, 37, said there were no plans to tour and that it could be several years before another Decemberists album appears. Instead work continues on the next two volumes of “The Wildwood Chronicles” (more may follow), and Mr. Meloy is also talking about writing a musical.

His literary move is only the latest proof that children’s books are no longer the sole preserve of children’s book authors, as everyone from Margaret Atwood to Cal Ripken Jr. to Desmond Tutu has shown in recent years.

“I feel like everyone I know is writing one,” said Maile Meloy, Mr. Meloy’s older sister and an acclaimed novelist in her own right. (Her first children’s book, “The Apothecary,” was just published by Putnam.)

Given all this, Mr. Meloy is wary of appearing as if he were dabbling. “We’re not leveraging quasi celebrity to do this,” he said. “And hopefully people would see this as not something I’m doing on a whim, sort of a vanity project, like Madonna writing a picture book.”

Five publishers vied for the book series, which was acquired last year by Donna Bray, the co-publisher of Balzer & Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins. The debut volume has a 250,000-copy first print run.

The mayhem and menace described in Mr. Meloy’s music, and now in his books, seems less a product of a violence fetish than of an interest in rebooting stock figures culled from Victorian literature, American bluegrass or Anglo-Irish and Scottish folk songs.

“I’m taking the kind of darkness and the macabre aspect of old folk songs and pushing the envelope a bit,” he said.

A bit? When the couple’s only child, Hank, was a toddler, Mr. Meloy wrote “The Rake’s Song,” in which a widower, yearning to be free, remorselessly offs his three children. (He feeds Charlotte foxglove, drowns Dawn in the bath, and burns Isaiah “for incurring my wrath.”)

After hearing the song for the first time, Ms. Ellis said she nearly vomited. “I have a pretty strong stomach when it comes to Decemberists lyrics,” she said. “But that was just horrifying.”

Just for the record, Mr. Meloy said: “I don’t advocate the murder of children. But I happen to know it’s true that people are tickled by that stuff, or else I probably would have been crucified long ago.”

Generations of young readers have been similarly tickled by the macabre, thanks to Roald Dahl, John Bellairs and Lemony Snicket. Ms. Ellis, 36, who has contributed to The New York Times, actually illustrated a Lemony Snicket book, “The Composer Is Dead.” Her taste for moody anachronism has led to comparisons to Edward Gorey, who illustrated many of Bellairs’s books.

“But I’m more drawn to mid-19th-century Siberia than Victorian England, which was his thing,” said Ms. Ellis, who has also created the art for nearly every Decemberists album.

Hank, now 5, looks like Mr. Meloy in miniature. He appeared during an interview dressed in sneakers and pajamas. “It’s time to go to O.M.S.I.!” the boy shouted, gleefully referring to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry as if it were a giant playground. Hank likes to listen to Stravinsky or “Ride of the Valkyries” while barreling through the house like a charging warrior.

“He has Asperger’s, I don’t know if you know that,” Mr. Meloy said later in the woods. Hank’s parents seem to relish calling their son “weird,” as they both did several times throughout the interview, but their frankness about Hank’s Asperger’s syndrome doesn’t mean that they are not sometimes challenged by it.

“He’s so deeply in his own imaginary world, and sometimes it’s utterly frustrating to remove him from it,” Ms. Ellis said.

Mr. Meloy channeled his struggle to communicate with his son into a track from “The King Is Dead”:

Hey Henry, can you hear me?

Let me see those eyes

This distance between us

Can seem of mountain size.

“It’s funny because one of the hallmarks of Asperger’s or autism is an inability to kind of imagine or do creative, imaginative play,” Mr. Meloy said. “But Hank has developed into this person who could turn anything into imaginative play. He doesn’t fit that description at all. In fact, I’ve seen him using a blanket as a mountain and just his hands as dragons. I feel like he’s the only kid we could’ve created together.”

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  The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma by Trenton Lee Stewart is the third book in his children’s adventure series. W...

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Review: Wildwood Chronicles by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis

By Nicki Richesin , The Children’s Book Review Published: December 30, 2011

Wildwood Chronicles

By Colin Meloy; illustrated by Carson Ellis

Reading level: Ages 9 and up

Hardcover: 560 pages

Publisher: Balzer + Bray; First Edition first Printing edition (August 30, 2011)

Source: Library

What to expect: Fantasy

At first glance, Wildwood Chronicles may seem too massive a tome to read to your children. Although daunting, I’m glad that we undertook the challenge. For the more faint-hearted, you may want to invest in the audiobook narrated by Amanda Plummer (whom you may remember as Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction and the axe-murder in So I Married an Axe Murderer ). I’m told she employs a remarkable number of voices for this large cast of characters. The one character she cannot give voice yet seems to pulse with life throughout this book is the forest itself, the various flora and fauna that inhabit this Northwestern clime, and the ivy that lurks just below its surface waiting to engulf its very heart.

The soul of the book for me is the uncommonly bold heroine Prue who risks life and limb for her brother Mac and even puts her own parents to shame with her fearlessness. The story begins, much like Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens , when baby Mac is snatched from his radio flyer wagon in the park and whisked into the sky by a murder of crows. Shocked yet undaunted, Prue returns to her house for supplies and leaves to rescue her brother early the following morning. Unbeknownst to her, she is followed by her curious friend Curtis who only wants to help her. Once past the Impassable Wilderness, they encounter an army of coyotes and lead separate adventures for most of the book until they are reunited in a battle to save Wildwood and Mac.

The inventive ragtag cast of characters befriends and tricks Prue and Curtis as they search for Mac and whom to trust along their way. They both encounter beasts and humans trying to survive in a world that has changed since the reign of Alexandra the mad Queen who was banished to the Wastelands. Her devoted legion of various birds and coyotes prove formidable foes for Prue, Curtis, the Mystics, Bandits, and the Irregulars as they mount a campaign to defeat Alexandra and her minions and take back Wildwood. Throughout the novel, Carson Ellis’s delicate illustrations provide a fantastic backdrop for her husband’s imagination. The husband and wife live just across from the Impassable Wilderness and it would seem the perfect inspiration for them to conjure Wildwood into life. I must confess, though enchanting, Meloy’s long descriptions of fern and bracken often proved too taxing for my seven-year-old. I admire the breadth and depth of his imagination and his sheer ability to bring a story to Portland that will leave a mark on this fair city for some time to come. Much like Eloise in New York or Paddington Bear in London, Prue and Curtis will live on in the hearts and minds of the citizens of Portland. I salute the pair for a masterfully good read and look forward to reading their next installment.

Add this book to your collection : The Wildwood Chronicles, Book 1

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Nicki Richesin is the editor of four anthologies, What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding On To, and Letting Go of Their Daughters; Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond; Crush: 26 Real-Life Tales of First Love ; and  The May Queen: Women on Life, Work, and Pulling it all Together in your Thirties . Her anthologies have been excerpted and praised in  The New York Times , the  San Francisco Chronicle ,  The Boston Globe ,  Redbook ,  Parenting, Cosmopolitan ,  Bust ,  Salon ,  Daily Candy , and  Babble .

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Nicki Richesin is a freelance writer and editor based in San Francisco. She writes personal essays and pieces on lifestyle, parenting, and pop culture for Sunset, DuJour, 7×7, Daily Candy, and The Huffington Post. She is also the author and editor of The May Queen, Because I Love Her, What I Would Tell Her, and Crush. You can find her online at http://www.nickirichesin.com

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Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles, 1) Paperback – Deckle Edge, September 25, 2012

Purchase options and add-ons.

For fans of the Chronicles of Narnia comes the first book in the Wildwood Chronicles, the New York Times bestselling fantasy adventure series by Colin Meloy, lead singer of the Decemberists, and Carson Ellis, acclaimed illustrator of The Mysterious Benedict Society . Now in paperback!

Wildwood  captivates readers with the wonder and thrill of a secret world within the landscape of a modern city. It feels at once firmly steeped in the classics of children's literature and completely fresh. The story is told from multiple points of view, and the book features more than eighty illustrations, including six full-color plates, making this an absolutely gorgeous object.

In Wildwood , Prue and her friend Curtis uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval—a world full of warring creatures, peaceable mystics, and powerful figures with the darkest intentions. And what begins as a rescue mission becomes something much greater as the two friends find themselves entwined in a struggle for the very freedom of this wilderness. A wilderness the locals call Wildwood.

The bestselling trilogy from Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis consists of Wildwood, Under Wildwood, and Wildwood Imperium.

• Book 1 of 3 Wildwood Chronicles
• Print length 576 pages
• Language English
• Grade level 3 - 6
• Lexile measure 870L
• Dimensions 6 x 1.6 x 7.75 inches
• Publisher Balzer + Bray
• Publication date September 25, 2012
• ISBN-10 9780062024701
• ISBN-13 978-0062024701
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

Meloy has an immediately recognizable verbal style and creates a fully realized fantasy world…. Ellis’s illustrations perfectly capture the original world and contribute to the feel of an instant timeless classic. Further adventures in Wildwood cannot come quickly enough. — School Library Journal (starred review)

WILDWOOD is an irresistible, atmospheric adventure - richly imagined and richly rewarding. — Trenton Lee Stewart, New York Times bestselling author of The Mysterious Benedict Society

This book is like the wild, strange forest it describes. It is full of suspense and danger and frightening things the world has never seen, and once I stepped inside I never wanted to leave. — Lemony Snicket

A satisfying blend of fantasy, adventure story, eco-fable and political satire with broad appeal; especially recommended for preteen boys. — Kirkus Reviews

WILDWOOD is a beautiful object and a beautiful read. One half fairy tale, one half coming of age story, one half unrepentantly gorgeous work of art, this book is overflowing with gifts. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Dark and whimsical, with a true and uncanny sense of otherworldliness, WILDWOOD is the heir to a great tradition of stories of wild childhood adventure. It snatched me up and carried me off into a world I didn’t want to leave. — Michael Chabon

From the Back Cover

Prue McKeel's life is ordinary. That is, until her brother is abducted by a murder of crows and taken to the Impassable Wilderness, a dense, tangled forest on the edge of Portland. No one's ever gone in—or at least returned to tell of it.

So begins an adventure that will take Prue and her friend Curtis deep into the Impassable Wilderness. There they uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval—a world full of warring creatures, peaceable mystics, and powerful figures with the darkest intentions. And what begins as a rescue mission becomes something much greater as the two friends find themselves entwined in a struggle for the very freedom of this wilderness. A wilderness the locals call Wildwood.

About the Author

Colin Meloy is the author of The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid and the New York Times bestselling Wildwood Chronicles as well as two picture books, The Golden Thread: A Song for Pete Seeger and Everyone’s Awake. He is also the singer and songwriter for the indie rock band the Decemberists. Colin lives in Oregon with his wife and frequent collaborator, illustrator Carson Ellis, and their sons.

Carson Ellis is the illustrator of a number of books for children, including the Wildwood Chronicles, and is the author and illustrator of the picture books Du Iz Tak?, a Caldecott Honor winner, and Home . Carson lives just outside Portland, Oregon, with her family.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0062024701
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Balzer + Bray; Reprint edition (September 25, 2012)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 576 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780062024701
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0062024701
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 7 - 12 years, from customers
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 870L
• Grade level ‏ : ‎ 3 - 6
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.44 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.6 x 7.75 inches
• #225 in Children's Siblings Books (Books)
• #1,247 in Children's Fantasy & Magic Books
• #1,630 in Children's Action & Adventure Books (Books)

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About the author

Colin meloy.

Colin Meloy is the charismatic lead singer and songwriter of The Decemberists, a highly celebrated (and uncommonly literary) band that has sold in excess of 1 million records. Colin has been recognized as much for his musical abilities—his ear for inventive and timeless melodies and his lilting vocals—as he has been for his unmatched lyrical prowess. Crafting each song as a vivid, imaginative story unto itself, he’s become one of the most distinctive and appreciated voices of our time. WILDWOOD marks Colin’s debut as children’s author. Follow Colin on Twitter, @colinmeloy.

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BookBrowse Reviews Wildwood by Colin Meloy, Carson Ellis

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by Colin Meloy , Carson Ellis

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• Speculative, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Alt. History
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A spellbinding tale full of wonder that juxtaposes the thrill of a secret world and modern city life. Ages 9+

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Wildwood Chronicles Series

The Creatives Behind the Books

Colin Meloy is the lead singer and songwriter of The Decemberists, and the author of several children’s books, including the New York Times bestselling Wildwood series. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Carson Ellis previously illustrated The Composer Is Dead by Lemony Snicket and Dillweed’s Revenge by Florence Parry Heide. She also collaborated with her husband, Colin Meloy, on the best-selling Wildwood series. Carson Ellis lives with her family outside Portland, Oregon.

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Can we think about evil without getting caught up in Christian mythology?

In “The Devil’s Best Trick,” Randall Sullivan examines the origins of evil.

On the morning of Nov. 20, 1961, Michael Rockefeller, the 23-year-old son of New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, swam up to a group of Asmat warriors along the southwest coast of New Guinea. In short order, the scion of one of the wealthiest and most powerful families on Earth, a young man universally described by friends and relatives as good, was, as I found while reporting my book “Savage Harvest,” speared, killed, cooked over a fire and eaten.

It’s hard to find a more glaring definition of sin, wickedness and evil — the Devil’s work, if you’re thinking in those terms — than such violence done to a sacred human body. But what if Pep, Fin and Ajam, the men who did the deed, had never heard of God or the Devil, Adam and Eve and the serpent? What if they were acting under their own ancient, sacred laws and a radically different concept of evil? What if the Asmats didn’t consider what they did to Rockefeller a sin at all, but a widely accepted practice that restored the world’s balance and harmony, and permitted an entire community to live in peace after years of suffering?

In “ The Devil’s Best Trick: How the Face of Evil Disappeared ,” by Randall Sullivan, such a question is never asked, much less answered. This literary, historical and on-the-ground “investigation into the inescapable reality of evil and the myriad ways humankind attempts to understand and confront it through the figure of the Devil,” as the publicity sheet proclaims, is one big, sloppy mess that is written strictly from the perspective of the minority of humankind who call themselves Christians, a group that’s been around for the briefest sliver of time. Which matters, in this case, because a book whose purpose is to explore what evil is and why it exists across humankind falls short the second it fixates on this single archetype as expressed in a single myth, to the exclusion of others, while also mostly claiming that myth isn’t mythical at all. “I had long since decided that there is a Devil, a force of evil that human beings can best comprehend by personifying it,” Sullivan writes. “I had come to believe … that all the discord, calumny, and sheer hatred that drive the world were descended from the first break with God that the Devil had made before there was any time to count, let alone human beings to corrupt or redeem. It was all a product of this original separation.”

But the Asmat, along with most of the people on Earth since before there was any time to count, never broke from God, never experienced original separation, either literally or metaphorically. Nor did the Aztecs, who, unbelievably, are the only non-Christian, pre-contact people to enter Sullivan’s narrative with any substance. Even more unbelievably, they do so as forces of evil through the eyes of none other than the Spanish conquistadors Hernán Cortés and Bernal Díaz del Castillo, whose journals are the definitive account of the event.

In 1519, Cortes and 500-odd men landed on the shores of the Yucatán and marched on Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire (today’s Mexico City), destroying its temples, killing its priests and imprisoning its ruler, Montezuma (a story illuminatingly told in Álvaro Enrigue’s splendid novel “You Dreamed of Empires”). Sullivan writes that ripping the hearts out of living human beings, eating their body parts, building temples from piles of human skulls and other unquestionably freaky, horrific practices, which amounted to the killing of hundreds of thousands of people, were clearly evil, the Devil’s work.

It’s hard to imagine anyone happily consenting to having their beating heart ripped out on a stone pyre, sure, but thanks to Cortes and the men who came in his footsteps, upward of 50 million people were murdered by guns, germs and steel. In the process, whole complex civilizations like the Aztec and Inca, peoples with their own intricate codes and ethics and morals and arts, were wiped out. If evil is “anything that causes harm or suffering to a sentient being,” as Sullivan writes (citing the religious-studies scholar Jeffrey Burton Russell), the Christians who poured into the New World were archfiends at the Devil’s work compared with people such as the Asmats and the Aztecs, a point of comparison that Sullivan never grapples with.

I’m not nitpicking here. Sullivan is the author of six previous books and a veteran narrative journalist who has long written about crime and war for Rolling Stone and other publications, and he should know better. I wanted so much to love “The Devil’s Best Trick,” but it’s a real head-shaker from start to finish. In the opening pages, Sullivan travels to a remote part of Veracruz, Mexico, the supposed epicenter of black-magic worshipers and witches, or brujos, who weave spells and bring harm, an old and rich element of Mexican culture and of a piece with similar syncretic traditions throughout Latin America. (Think Maximon, the patron saint of prostitutes and bandits in Guatemala, who likes a cigarette or 10 along with his shots of aguardiente and is venerated in the same rooms as Jesus himself.) It’s a promising start, telegraphing that we’re going in deep, on the ground, with a skilled reporter. I was excited!

But just six pages in, he breaks away from Mexico and begins a slog through the Devil’s appearance in Christian theology and literary history that goes on for more than 100 pages, interwoven not with scenes in Mexico, out of which Sullivan yanked us, but with the death of Tate Rowland, a young man found hanging from a tree in Childress, Tex., in 1988. Did Rowland commit suicide, as the police decided at the time, or was he murdered in some kind of satanic cult? How about his sister, who turned up dead three years later? Sullivan digs into the story and rumors of satanic cults sweeping America at the time, over many chapters, in breaks between 1,000 years of theological arguments about the nature of evil in the face of a perfect God (the essential question), and comes up empty-handed. We still don’t know if Rowland was murdered or not, or if any cult was involved, and there’s nothing particularly enlightening or compelling about the events of Childress, period.

Finally, Sullivan takes us back to Mexico, via side roads into Stanley Milgram’s infamous prison experiment and an exorcism that took place in Earling, Iowa, in 1928. At last! But instead of going deep — there’s a whole country and culture of witches and healers, or curanderos, and a cult of Santa Muerte that he could have spent months really getting to know — Sullivan’s total research amounts to one trip of a few days to one place, where he meets with the 78-year-old nephew of a great brujo’s girlfriend, the brujo himself having died in the 1960s, and the equally aged daughter of the brujo’s apprentice, also long gone, both of whom tell Sullivan second- and third-hand stories for a night or two. Sullivan, who can’t speak Spanish, and his interpreter spend more time worrying about being shanghaied by narcos (this, too, is perhaps supposed to be redolent of the Devil’s presence) than they do actually making sense of the historical and cultural role played by healers and witches in Mexico — never mind what all of that tells us about good and evil or the idea of the Devil.

There are hints along this crooked journey that Sullivan was as confused while writing his book as I was reading it. He once mentions deleting most of the text, almost 200 pages, and having to start again. His trips to Mexico and much of his reporting took place in 2015, nine years ago, an indication that he has been struggling over this for, well, a devilishly long time. Who knows? The Devil, of course, works in all sorts of insidious and nefarious ways. Sometimes, we’re told, people sit down with him and make a deal, sell their souls, as the brujos did in Mexico, and as the fiddler did in the Charlie Daniels song, for extra power. If only Sullivan had made such a deal as he struggled with writing this book. But, alas, he never seems to have met him, no matter where he looked.

Carl Hoffman is the author of five books, including “Savage Harvest,” for which he learned to speak Bahasa Indonesia and lived in a remote Asmat village in West Papua, Indonesia.

The Devil’s Best Trick

How the Face of Evil Disappeared

By Randall Sullivan

Atlantic Monthly. 333 pp. $30

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A popular comedian known for deadpan delivery writes first novel

For a guy who usually looks so mournful, Steven Wright has been making a lot of people laugh for 40 years.

A standup comic, Wright has an almost patented delivery: Deadpan, almost dead, his pipe-cleaner limbs stiff and motionless, a deep voice coming through nearly monotone.

And with that voice, Wright crunches, and sometimes crushes, logic with one-line zingers.

"How come abbreviated is such a long word?"

"I bought a million lottery tickets. I won a dollar."

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

"How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink."

"I had a psychic girlfriend, but she left me before we met."

Wight has occasionally strayed into acting ("Reservoir Dogs," "Natural Born Killers") and filmmaking. Now he's produced a first novel, "Harold." If you like his style, you'll love the book.

It is approximately 1969 -- the Apollo astronauts have taken the famous photo of the Earth from the Moon -- and Harold is a 7-year-old third grader in Ms. Yuka's third grade class at Wildwood Elementary, somewhere in Massachusetts.

The book follows Harold for one day in class, although Harold's mind tends to wander, taking him to the local cemetery and to his grandfather's house up in the Maine woods, or on a starship with Carl Sagan. Harold tortures Ms. Yuka with questions that have nothing to do with the lesson. For one thing, she's Asian American, and Harold asks, when she was back in China, did she ever try to dig all the way to the U.S.A.? (Answer: No.) 

Still, she's tolerant and lets him do fingerpaints while wearing mittens. Harold has a crush on a classmate, Elizabeth, and does little about it, though he's always thinking up clever repartee. He also thinks a lot about the Lakota Indians, the astronauts and death. (His parents decided he's Catholic, the same way they decided his name was Harold, but he's not sure God exists. He's rather inordinately fond of his agnosticism.) And though he's rather ordinary on the outside, Harold has ideas constantly flying through his head. He likens them to being carried by birds, flying through the screen of his mind. (He grows very precisely about describing the birds' species and coloration.)

For instance, what if jet bombers dropped sweaters instead of bombs? Do birds think about being alive? Reading between the lines, it's not hard to see that everything's not great with Harold. His mother is in some kind of asylum (because she won't stop talking), and apparently, Harold's grandfather isn't with us anymore. But he carries on.

"Harold" isn't a classic. Besides Harold, none of the other characters really comes into focus; much of the text reads like notes for a Steven Wright stand-up gig. Ever at its least, however, it is very funny and often poignant.

Book review

By Steven Wright

Simon & Schuster, $26

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Under wildwood: the wildwood chronicles, book 2, common sense media reviewers.

Whimsical fantasy sequel falls short of original.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

Under Wildwood is set in the environs of Portland,

Under Wildwood emphasizes bravery, loyalty, and re

Prue, Curtis, Rachel, and Elsie each find themselv

Under Wildwood features a small amount of violence

Under Wildwood contains only some very minor cursi

Parents need to know that Under Wildwood is the sequel to 2011's Wildwood , by Colin Meloy (lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter for the folk-rock band the Decemberists), and picks up the fanciful story without missing a beat. Young children are sent to an awful orphanage and forced to work in a…

Educational Value

Under Wildwood is set in the environs of Portland, Ore., but the real-life area is treated as a fantasy land, featuring an Impassable Wilderness full of talking animals and wild magic.

Positive Messages

Under Wildwood emphasizes bravery, loyalty, and resourcefulness and features young characters who risk everything to protect each other and the magical Woods.

Positive Role Models

Prue, Curtis, Rachel, and Elsie each find themselves in situations where they must put aside their own immediate concerns and fight to save others. Some of the dangers they face are fantastic -- a shape-shifting assassin, a battle in a city of moles -- but they also struggle with more mundane conflicts about loyalty and family.

Violence & Scariness

Under Wildwood features a small amount of violence, which is usually described with a light touch and little graphic detail. Children battle wild animals, supernatural threats, and muscle-bound adults. Two older characters are victims of mutilation -- one had both hands cut off, one was blinded. An evil orphanage burns down.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Under Wildwood contains only some very minor cursing -- a couple of instances of "damned" or "damnedest."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Under Wildwood is the sequel to 2011's Wildwood , by Colin Meloy (lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter for the folk-rock band the Decemberists), and picks up the fanciful story without missing a beat. Young children are sent to an awful orphanage and forced to work in a factory, a lead character fights a supernatural assassin, children battle wild animals and muscle-bound adults, and two minor characters were physically mutilated before this story begins -- one had both hands cut off, one was blinded. But the level of danger in the story never rises to a point likely to upset anyone other than the most sensitive readers. And there's only minor cursing: a couple of instances of "damned" or "damnedest."

Where to Read

Community reviews.

• Parents say (1)
• Kids say (2)

Based on 1 parent review

What's the Story?

Although her friend Curtis Mehlberg is happy have stayed behind in the Impassable Wilderness to live with his bandit pals, Prue McKeel finds herself out of sorts as she tries to resume her life in Portland. She soon learns, however, that her life is in danger. Pursued by a relentless, shape-shifting assassin, she finds herself back in the Woods, just as one of her most treasured allies is destroyed. Meanwhile Curtis' sisters, Elsie and Rachel, are held at a strange orphanage and must devise a plan of escape.

Is It Any Good?

UNDER WILDWOOD is an inventive fantasy adventure that recaptures some, but not all, of the magic of its predecessor. Author Colin Meloy and illustrator Carson Ellis continue to emphasize the sly humor and generous spirit of the narrative. The action is split roughly in two, alternating between returning characters Prue and Curtis and new additions Elsie and Rachel. Unfortunately, the Prue and Curtis sections feel repetitive, while the Elsie and Rachel portions get bogged down in an unpleasant and not terribly gripping scenario. Things pick up as the two groups stumble toward each other, but Under Wildwood feels very much like the muddled middle volume of a trilogy.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how the geography and history of places like Portland can be used as the building blocks for fantasy stories. Does it make the fantasy more interesting to be located in a real city?

How do you think Under Wildwood compares with the original Wildwood ? Is it as exciting?

Would you be able to go off your own and live away from your parents and siblings for a great length of time? What kinds of resources would you need to survive and be happy?

Book Details

• Author : Colin Meloy
• Illustrator : Carson Ellis
• Genre : Fantasy
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Adventures , Friendship , Wild Animals
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : Balzer + Bray
• Publication date : September 25, 2012
• Publisher's recommended age(s) : 9 - 12
• Number of pages : 576
• Available on : Nook, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
• Last updated : July 12, 2017

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Book Deals: Week of June 3, 2024

Metropolitan signs palestinian rapper.

In an exclusive submission, Riva Hocherman at Metropolitan has acquired world rights to two books by Palestinian rapper Tamer Nafar , considered by many to be the godfather of Palestinian hip-hop. Nafar was represented by Anjali Singh at the Anjali Singh Agency. Singh said the first book, 3Gs , due out in 2026, is a memoir that “tells the story of Nafar’s life, his father’s life, and his future daughter, tracing the past and future of Palestinian creativity.” The second book, 2 ATMs , due out in 2028, is a graphic novel set in the author’s hometown of Lyd, Israel, and features “a man caught between his day job as an upstanding bank clerk and his night gig selling drugs.” The deal is the first for Singh at her new eponymous agency.

First Second Chases Ying’s ‘Sunspots’

Kiara Valdez at First Second has acquired world English rights to Chasing Sunspots by Victoria Ying ( Hungry Ghost ). First Second said the YA graphic novel is about “a high school girl who, in her attempt to find validation for her art and chase her dreams of entering the comics industry, finds the strength and self-worth to overcome a manipulative relationship with a much older cartoonist.” Jennifer Azantian at Azantian Literary negotiated the deal. Publication is scheduled for 2027.

Ballantine Nabs Handley’s Decision Guide

After an auction, Ann Handley , author of the bestselling Everybody Writes , has sold North American rights to ASAP: As Slow as Possible to Mary Reynics at Ballantine. Melissa Flashman at Janklow & Nesbit brokered the deal. Ballantine said the book is a “practical, story-driven, research-backed” guide meant to help readers discover “when and how to slow down in a world obsessed with speed to achieve improved results, better decisions, and deeper meaning in their life and work.” No pub date has been announced.

Gladwell Tips ‘Revenge’ to LB

Little, Brown has acquired North American rights to Malcolm Gladwell ’s Revenge of the Tipping Point . The bestselling author was represented by Tina Bennett of Bennett Literary. Little, Brown executive editor Asya Muchnick will edit. The publisher said Gladwell will revisit the ideas he introduced in The Tipping Point , published in 2000, drawing on “fresh case studies” to “rethink and expand on his original models about how trends are born, catch on, and spread.” Revenge of the Tipping Point is scheduled for publication in October.

Harper Lands Woo’s Gothic Mystery Debut

In a preempt, Sarah Stein at Harper Paperbacks has acquired North American rights to Wildwood , by debut author Ashley Woo . Jade Kavanagh at Darley Anderson negotiated the two-book deal. Kavanagh described the book as “a chilling gothic mystery about a young couple expecting their first child, who unexpectedly become owners of 300-year-old house in Vermont and discover a buried connection to the ghosts of witchcraft accusations centuries before, and neighbors who might desire more than just to take their land.” Wildwood is tentatively set for a fall 2026 publication.

Bloomsbury Inks Hwang’s Debut Novel

Amber Oliver at Bloomsbury has acquired North American rights to debut novelist J.B. Hwang ’s Mendell Station . The deal was brokered by Jin Auh at the Wylie Agency. Bloomsbury said the novel is “about faith, grief, friendship, and love,” and “the peculiar rhythms of work,” adding that it follows a “30-something Korean American woman who quits her job as a private Christian school teacher following the death of her best friend to become a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service.” Mendell Station is scheduled to be published in 2025.

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Today’s immigration was set in motion by past US actions, a journalist argues

In “Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here,” Jonathan Blitzer examines the U.S. government’s role in Central America as a factor in the rising numbers of asylum-seekers today. 

• By Barbara Spindel

May 30, 2024

Immigration has long been an explosive issue in American politics, especially during an election season. Jonathan Blitzer begins “Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here,” his sweeping, powerful book on the subject, by cutting through the noise with a stark observation. “For more than a century, the US has devised one policy after another to keep people out of the country,” he writes. “For more than a century, it has failed.” 

Blitzer, a New Yorker staff writer, seeks to explain today’s humanitarian crisis at the southern border by tracing it back to its roots. For many years, the majority of immigrants encountered by Border Patrol agents were Mexican men crossing into the United States to work. By the 2010s, however, the demographics had shifted. Migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras began arriving at the border in large numbers, seeking asylum. They included families as well as unaccompanied children. 

The author argues that mass migration from Central America is the result of decades of meddlesome and misguided American policy in the region. He notes that “the first asylum seekers were escaping regimes the US was arming and supporting in the name of fighting communism” in the wake of 1959’s Cuban Revolution. More recent waves, he suggests, have been fleeing conditions created in part by those interventions.

The book follows different characters to dramatize the effects of broad political forces on individual lives. If “Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here” could be said to have a protagonist, it is Juan Romagoza, an extraordinary Salvadoran surgeon who devoted his career to providing free medical care. He was tortured by government forces during El Salvador’s long and brutal civil war, which began in 1979, for suspicion of being a leftist sympathizer. 

Fearing for his life, Romagoza embarked on a perilous journey to the United States, settling first in California and then in Washington, D.C., where in 1987 he began running a volunteer clinic that offered free medical services to unauthorized immigrants. Unlicensed to practice medicine in the U.S., he also worked as a janitor.

Because the U.S. provided economic aid and military training to El Salvador’s violently repressive government, Blitzer argues that “the Americans were helping to unleash a regional exodus.” Eventually – and astonishingly – nearly a quarter of the country’s population fled and was living in the U.S., many without legal status. 

Another prominent figure in the book represents mass movement in the other direction: deportation. Eddie Anzora was born in El Salvador but was brought to California when he was 3 years old. Thoroughly Americanized, he grew up in a Los Angeles neighborhood beset with gang violence. He had some scrapes with the law, but was hardworking and ambitious, Blitzer writes. 

As a response to 9/11, however, the creation of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2003 altered the playbook. In 2007, Anzora was deported to the country of his birth. The MS-13 gang originated in LA, but deportations brought the gang violence to Central America. Anzora adjusted to his new life, getting a job at a call center and opening an English-language school. But he was an exception. “Of the thirty people on [Anzora’s] original deportation flight, fewer than five were still alive,” Blitzer writes of the period after Anzora’s arrival.

Blitzer’s deep research has created a vivid and panoramic account. The book is also elegantly written. Describing Guatemala’s violent crackdown on political opposition in the early 1980s, Blitzer writes, “The judicial police might pick someone off in broad daylight, and it would happen so fast, with so little fanfare, that passersby might not even notice. A witness would observe the seamless way quotidian life sealed back up around the disturbance, leaving a trace so slight it felt like a taunt.” 

“Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here” comes at a time when the discourse around immigration feels particularly mean-spirited. For that reason, Blitzer’s compassionate, memorable account is particularly welcome.

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