A one-legged, limping pig and a dancing pig and a pot-bellied fairy and singing maggots and a murderous tulip and a victorious daisy and a clumsy poet spider and a flat-as-a-pancake farmer’s wife (hung out to dry on the clothesline) and a whispering meat cleaver and a farmer named Bald and his son named Bones and Alfred the sneezing dog and a philosopher cat . . . Oh. my. goodness.

By the time I had wrapped my head around all those rather horrible and bizarre characters, this short 100-page book was over, and I was trying to go back and re-read to figure out exactly what happened. Sometimes I can compare the children’s fantasy books I read to others: this one might be like Harry Potter, and that one is similar to Tolkien or the dystopian novels or some fairy tale. Fat & Bones has the distinction of being unique in my reading experience.

It’s as if the author had a series of nightmares that she wrote into a series of interlocking tales, for children. To give them nightmares? It’s not exactly scary. No one would believe in and be afraid of the world that Ms. Theule has given us. It’s world in which a dog’s sneeze can move mountains. A world in which a maimed pig gives up her last foot to the whispering meat cleaver. And spiders give up their blood to make a Bluebell Blindness Inducer Potion. Frightening, no, but definitely creepy and surreal. The illustrations by Adam S. Doyle add to the hallucinatory, ink-blot atmosphere.

If any of that weirdness intrigues you, you should take a look at Fat & Bones. I can’t really say that I recommend it, but I am still thinking about it three days after I read the book. It’s a story that will stick in your brain, for better or for worse.

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This book is also nominated for a Cybil Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.