Dashes of Dahl. Snippets of Snicket. Heaps of Horvath. Those are the comparisons on the back of the ARC of this rather gothic middle grade adventure novel that I read breathlessly to the end in one day.

I would add: A modicum of Monty Python. Pinches of The Princess Bride (without the kissing). Even a bit of Joan Aiken’s Wolves of WIlloughby Chase.

So I’m not as good with the alliteration as the blurb writer. I do have three questions after reading about the strange and abnormal Hardscrabble children, Otto, Lucia, and Max, and their adventure in Snoring-by-the-Sea:

1. What is lurgy?

2. Will Otto ever talk?

3. Do British children really hate peanut butter and jelly (jam, not jello) sandwiches, and if so, what do they eat when there’s no food in the house except for PBJ?

If you can answer these questions and if you’ve already read The Kneebone Boy, you probably figured out the ending to the story long before I did –especially since I didn’t figure it out until the end when our helpful narrator who shall remain unnamed told us exactly what was what and who was who. I loved the chapter titles, such as:
In which the Hardscrabbles worry about the title of this book and other things.

In which Max’s educated guess had better be right or else Lucia and Otto are going to throttle him.

However, it must be said that those sorts of titles don’t really give away much about what’s going to happen in any particular chapter, much less how the book is going to end. Anyway, it also won’t hurt to tell that The Kneebone Boy has no vampires, no magic, only one very small ghost, one large castle and one small play castle, lots of adventure, many oddities, and a few crazies. Also, there’s not much blood, and lots of stuff happens at night . . . in the dark . . . in a spooky forest.Oh, and there’s a dungeon and a secret passageway.

If all that doesn’t convince you to pick a copy of The Kneebone Boy and start reading now, you obviously aren’t like Lucia who “wished something interesting would happen” and read lots of novels. Nor are you the Max-type, Max being the youngest Hardscrabble “who always thought he knew better” and thought “deeply and importantly.” You might be like Otto, the oddest of the Hardscrabble children. Otto, who never spoke out loud, only communicated with his own special sign language, and generally wanted to go home to Little Tunks instead of continuing on a dangerous and exciting adventure.

Now if that paragraph didn’t get you, nothing will.