JASPER DASH AND THE FLAME-PITS OF DELAWARE: A Pals in Peril Tale
by M. T. Anderson
Beach Lane Books/Simon & Schuster
Hardcover: 9781416986393
Paperback: 9781442408388
Ages 10-up
448 pages
Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, is getting a little tired of trying to fit in at school. He’s training hard to compete on the school’s Stare-Eyes team (“The rules were simple: Pair people off to stare at each other’s faces. First person to blink or smile loses. As is said of many games: a moment to learn, a lifetime to master”), but his work with eyelid weights and inflatable track suits is met with ridicule from his teammates. And when at the school’s big match with a champion team from Delaware, all eight members of Pelt’s team go down to defeat, Jasper and his friends, Katie Mulligan and Lily Gefelty, start to suspect that there’s something fishy going on, especially when Katie overhears some suspicious activity on the part of the Team Mom.
Jasper suspects that the Delawarean Stare-Eyes team might have stolen some valuable artifacts from the mysterious monastery of Vbngoom, hidden away in one of the perilous, shifting, mist-shrouded mountains of Delaware. Jasper has spent time at Vbngoom, learning the secrets and wisdom of the monks and befriending the young monk Drgnan Pghlik. To investigate the threat to Vbngoom, Jasper, Katie and Lily must navigate the spy-laden streets and exotic bazaars of Dover, outwit the Kangaroo-Riders of Armstrong, and avoid being thrown in the dungeons of Wilmington Castle. Oh, this doesn’t sound like the Delaware you know? Maybe not --- but have you really been to Delaware?
Neither has the narrator, who knows nothing about Delaware beyond its ridiculously high interstate tolls, and so is free to imagine a land of cannibals and fuzzy dinosaurs.
Like WHALES ON STILTS! and THE CLUE OF THE LINOLEUM LEDERHOSEN, JASPER DASH AND THE FLAME-PITS OF DELAWARE is both an entertaining adventure story in its own right and a fiendishly clever parody of any number of literary genres, from travel guides to gangster shoot-em-ups to sports novels. Jasper and Katie are --- in the fictional world of this series --- stars of their own series of adventure and horror novels, while Lily is their “normal” friend. M. T. Anderson plays with the expectations of these genres in a way that will delight all readers, especially those who enjoy genre fiction as a guilty pleasure.
Much of this crazy parody is laugh-out-loud funny, especially the dialogue by the gangsters who occupy the monastery and hold the monks hostage (“The boys hate cilantro. This got any cilantro in it?...‘Cause if there’s cilantro, Bargain Basement McGhee is likely to flip his short stack, if you know what I mean, and start Pow! Pow! Pow!”) and the showdown between the gangsters and the non-violent monks (“Weasel Chops tries a left-hand hook to the jaw, but the monk counters with a wish that all men and women could coexist peacefully, living in geodesic domes!”).
Despite the zany pastiche and ridiculous moments, there are also important lessons at work here about friendship, loyalty and dedication --- because what good old-fashioned adventure story doesn’t have a moral at its heart?
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
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