Kidsreads.com - THE MOSTLY TRUE ADVENTURES OF HOMER P. FIGG by Rodman Philbrick

THE MOSTLY TRUE ADVENTURES OF HOMER P. FIGG
by Rodman Philbrick
The Blue Sky Press/Scholastic
ISBN: 9780439668187
Ages 9-12
224 pages

Homer P. Figg is the kind of kid who always has a story ready to tell. When one character asks him if he knows anything about gemstones, Homer’s instinct is to tell a tall tale: “Something in me wants to say my third cousin Curtis McTavit has been trading gems for his whole life, and recently come into possession of the world’s largest ruby that he got off the widow of Blackbeard the pirate, but that the ruby is cursed. Ever since he got the ruby, poor McTavit lives in fear. He’s barricaded himself inside his own dungeon and believes that the ruby speaks to him in the ghostly voices of all it has cursed.” Homer’s urge to tell tales can sometimes help squeeze him out of a tough place; just as often, though, his tendency to embroider the truth can get him in over his head.

Homer finds himself in a tough place right from the beginning of the story. He and his older brother, Harold, are orphans, living with their mean-as-sin uncle in rural Maine. Uncle Squint works the boys hard and keeps them so hungry that Homer finds himself tempted by the slops he feeds the pigs. But Uncle Squint really outdoes himself when he sells Harold into the Union Army to take the place of the son of a rich man willing to pay good money to keep his son from dying in the Civil War.

When Homer realizes what his uncle has done, he runs away, only to find himself caught up by a couple of bounty hunters, sent to re-capture runaway slaves before they can make it to the Canadian border. These lowlife criminals spot Homer’s talent for lying right away, and they send him into the home of Jebediah Brewster, a tourmaline magnate who just happens to have one of the stations of the Underground Railroad hidden beneath his fine manor home. They figure that Homer can use his innocence and youth to find out the location of the runaway slaves --- just in time for the bounty hunters to swoop in. Even though Homer feels a little fishy about the whole thing, what can he do, with the bounty hunters breathing down his neck? But once he gets inside and meets the slaves and Brewster himself, Homer figures out that lies --- and tricks --- work both ways and that sometimes lies can work for good as well as for evil.

Philbrick’s novel moves at the breakneck speed of a runaway horse; just like the best old-fashioned adventure stories, readers will barely have time to catch their breath before Homer’s story charges incessantly forward. There is plenty of humor here, too, arising mainly from Homer’s own folksy narration --- it turns out that Homer can make his own adventures as rollicking and riotous as the tall tales he tells.

THE MOSTLY TRUE ADVENTURES OF HOMER P. FIGG may remind readers of some of the best stories in this vein: John D. Fitzgerald’s The Great Brain series, Richard Peck’s books about Blossom Culp and many of Sid Fleischman’s novels. There is a serious undercurrent beneath this fast-moving river of adventure, however, as Philbrick’s novel touches on issues of loyalty, cruelty and injustice against the very real backdrop of slavery and war. When Homer slows down to take a breath and reflect on the historical horrors he has been witness to, chances are readers will be left with something to think about, too.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

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