I fell in love with the similes Deb Caletti uses to describe various situations. That’s what kept me going until I finally realized The Weird in the Wilds: Tales of Triumph and Disaster! is Book 2. The background information from Book 1- A Flicker of Courage would have made this more enjoyable from the very beginning, but I am glad I stuck it out.

If you are a Harry Potter fan because of the magic and strange creatures, give The Weird in the Wilds: Tales of Triumph and Disaster! a try. The villain Vlad Luxor turns the school yard bully, Jason, whom he thinks insulted him into a gerenuk. Then, the heroes spend a good part of the story trying to turn Jason back into a boy again at the request of their teacher, Ms. Fortune. Our four heroes: Henry, Apollo, Jo, and Pirate Girl, are new to the business of being ‘spell breakers’.

To break the Bizarro Crueltildo spell placed upon Jason by Vlad the group must travel through The Wilds, a place all the locals avoid and for good reason. For one thing, The Shadow lives there. The gerenuk keeps wandering off in his continuous search for food, this makes him just as irritating to the heroes as when he was the bully Jason calling everyone and everything weird.

Deb Caletti has placed some pearls of wisdom along the way – “Weirdness is beautiful…But weirdness is powerful, too”. (208) Also, “Sometimes, cruelty is like a very strong cologne. a person stops smelling it on themselves. Other times, though, a person will tire of seeing everyone else crinkle their nose whenever they walk into a room. And then they decide to change.” (244)

Weirdness equals uniqueness which can be very uplifting and reaffirming. All in all, not a bad thing to be.

Please read Book 1 first because you’ll be sorry if you give up on The Weird in the Wilds: Tales of Triumph and Disaster! especially, if you are a Harry Potter fan.

Deb Caletti has sprinkled odd images throughout The Weird in the Wilds: Tales of Triumph and Disaster! has if taken from a very old Ripley’s Believe it or Not or sideshow acts from the early 1900s. Odd but fun. Yes, odd or weird is a theme of this book, so there you go. Enjoy!