Monday, August 10, 2020

"The Bunyan Barter" by Addie J King

Shortly before Thanksgiving, Janie Grimm and her housemates are awakened in the middle of the night by a very large man in a red flannel shirt chopping down the tree in her back yard while sobbing about someone having been taken. 

 After calming everyone down and realizing they are in no danger from their late night visitor, everyone returns inside to start up the coffee, breakfast, and call up the rest of the F.A.B.L.E.S. group to come and help solve the mysteries involved in this tale. 

 This book was centered around mainly American Legends and Tall tales. In this case Paul Bunyan's blue ox Babe has been kidnapped and someone is threatening to kill him if the apple heir is not brought to a meeting happening on the American Holiday. There's just one small problem… no one knows who the apple heir is, where exactly the exchange is supposed to take place, or what the real motive behind it all actually is. 

 This time around, we get to see & learn about a lot of those who are featured in American tall tales and legends. Most of the new characters encountered were ones that I had grown up hearing about, plus a few that were new to me. The ones that I was familiar with were portrayed much as I would have expected them to be, with enough extra personality added in so as to not have them come across as solely one dimensional characters. 

 I enjoyed this story, as well as the emotional conflicts that were happening as part of the secondary background tale, allowing us to see all the characters as fully developed individuals with problems of their own to deal with while they were busy trying to help solve magic and legend-based troubles. 

I believe that anyone who enjoys tall tales or stories of legendary historical figures will get a kick out of reading this one. I myself found it a very fun story to read and one that contains a great deal of emotion.

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