Revenge of the Beast

December 1, 2021
Following The Beast and the Bethany (2020), Ebenezer and Bethany struggle to become do-gooders. Troublemaking Bethany's working hard to change, and she wants Ebenezer--less enthusiastic but willing--to purge his beast-gifted luxuries and join her de-beasting mission. In flashbacks, readers see that lonely young Ebenezer's first friend was the beast; current-day Ebenezer knows he shouldn't miss the monster, but he kind of does. Furthermore, a significant difficulty in do-gooding is that neither hero knows how to be good. Luckily, they have Claudette, the Wintlorian purple-breasted parrot, for guidance--except Claudette's been feeling off ever since eating the beast. Though readers will be able to spot the not-so-vanquished beast operating through Claudette before the characters do, the exact schemes include intricate plans with details that still surprise. Bethany learns just how hard it is to overcome a bad reputation when she's sabotaged and then blamed for the fallout as the beast manipulates its way to a very public bad ending for her. The humor offers a delightful blend of dry eloquence and gross-out subject matter, as in the description of a building as "an architectural equivalent of someone who freely picks their nose in public." The resolution takes some clever thinking from Ebenezer but also a touch of deus ex machina. The story ends with a teaser for the next book. Some background characters in the illustrations bring racial diversity. Wickedly funny and surprisingly relatable beneath the exaggerated silliness. (Fantasy. 8-12)

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January 1, 2022
Grades 4-6 Uh-oh. The malign magic creature thought to be extirpated in The Beast and the Bethany (2020) is back and bent on gobbling down deliciously hateful orphan Bethany at last--as well as anyone else who gets in the way. As the sly beast is hiding inside the body of apparently benign parrot Claudette, it takes some time for the penny to drop for Bethany and her thoroughly reformed adult ally and former nemesis Ebenezer Tweezer, who just cannot understand why all their sincere efforts to "de-beast" and do good after years of pranks and evil deeds are going horribly wrong. Along with plenty of darkly suggestive cartoon illustrations, Meggitt-Phillips strews the spaciously leaded narrative with broad hints for readers and drives the tale to a hair- (or more accurately, feather) raising denouement that sees the beast undone by an act of selflessness . . . maybe. The author adds another thoroughly dislikable child to the mix, plus crowd-pleasing gross bits (earwax sandwiches, elephant-poop stink bombs) to brighten the farcical sequel's rather dark tone.

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