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Book Review: Clemency Pogue: The Hobgoblin Proxy
by R.J. Carter
Published: May 7, 2006
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Publication Date: May 9, 2006
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Author:
· JT Petty
Grade: A
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J.T. Petty's Clemency Pogue: The Hobgoblin Proxy is a delightfully wicked collection of wit and wordplay, centering around an especially sharp heroine.
Young Clemency, who has recently learned that fairies exist and now can see them everywhere, is bored. Her last adventure (recounted in Clemency Pogue: Fairy Killer) left her with a taste for excitement that no longer presents itself in her life:
Clemency's life now was a series of extra ordinary derring-don'ts. See Clemency make porridge! Thrill as she stubs her toe on an Ottoman! (The footstool, not the tribe of Oghuz Turks in the fifteenth century Middle Eastern province of Anatolia.) Tremble in anticipation of lunch in a brown bag... with carrot sticks!
Her adventure had left her sensitive to the world of the Make-Believe, but even those fairies and hobgoblins toiling at the edges of the waking world were humdrum at best. Clem spent the entirety of one social studies class watching the Fairy of Nothing Better to Do run into a window pane over and over again until she knocked herself unconscious and had to be carried off by the Head-Trauma Fairy.
When Clemency's father brings home a litter of puppies from his millionaire employer, Clemency's new adventure begins. She's soon horrified, however, that Mr. Pogue has been tasked with fixing up the boxer pups by bobbing of their tails and clipping their ears! When one little pup, Henry, begins to get weaker and weaker, Clemency uses this as an excuse to call upon her hobgoblin companion, Chaphesmeeso, for fairy help.
But Chaphesmeeso has his hands full with his own problems. His new protege, Kennethurchin, is intended to become a hobgoblin soon. But he can never become one unless the changeling that was left in his place as a baby dissolves, prompting Clemency to ponder just where it is that hobgoblins come from. In answer, Chaphesmeeso and the eager Kennethurchin take Clemency around the world, even stopping in France to peer in on a mother who's just about to bathe her child for the first time since he was switched with a clay baby changeling:
The two hobgoblins, the girl, and the increasingly impatient fairy watched from behind the bottom half of a door that opened like a scandalous bathing suit, in two pieces. This being France, the top was open.
As Clemency discovers the awful truth about goblins and hobgoblins ("You should see where human babies come from!" Chapesmeeso tells her), she also learns that no changeling has ever had the opportunity to grow up -- and that if one does, it spells the end for all of the Make-Believe! If Kenn's changeling doesn't dissolve, not only will Kenn be denied his hobgoblinhood, he'll go insane and the rest of fairydom will be kaput! The only solution: kill the changeling. But Clemency has an alternative plan.
Petty's humor is some of the cleverest ever invested into modern children's literature. It operates on two levels, appealing to the younger and older readers who will catch some of the humor that may pass over the heads of the younger. (My particular favorite occurs when Kenn releases some captured fairies from a jar, who then mistake Kenn for his identical changeling: "The jar was unscrewed, and Kenn was quite the opposite.") The occassional illustrations by Will Davis put me in mind of Brett Helquist's work in Chasing Vermeer.
On the whole, The Hobgoblin Proxy is one of the most enjoyable reads I've had in a long time, and I'm greatly looking forward to the next adventure for young Clemency.
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