Becket Brings A New Genre, Steampunk Sorcery, What A Tale!

Wow! Check out the Whole Cast of Goblins!

in

Good The Goblin Queen

By Becket

Illustrations by Raven Quinn

The pots, the pots,
it's the Pots and Pans Parade
We prance, we dance
like ants in pants
in the Pots and Pans Parade!
~~~

This is a silly book! It has lots of silly words! And pretty soon, you will begin to feel silly too, wouldn't you? Because there are lots of silly thoughts! And lots of silly rhymes... How could you help but begin to act silly too?! Say, for instance, little Good's parents... welllll, adoptive parents that is...

OK, you might not think of a little girl having orangutans for parents, but, when I did, in fact I thought it was...silly...

Good was never allowed
to cook anything if it did
not have banana in it.
She had to make banana
soup, banana stew,
banana bread, banana
butter, banana applesauce
banana salad, banana
sandwiches, banana
meatloaf, banana mashed
potatoes, banana ice cream
...(get the idea!)

Now, you see, Good was not a little baby orangutan because that would have been fine...Instead, Good was a little girl, just like you and I once were! In fact, when Good was reading this story, she started laughing and said "that's silly!" Good decided one day, that her life was not good at all!

The first reason for this decision was because her mom and dad had named her Good. She did not want to be called "bad." but she never liked being called Good either. It was not a normal name. She would have rather been called another lovely name, like Ginny,...People were always misunderstanding her. "What's your name?" they would ask and she would reply, "I'm Good." And they would think that she was not very smart because good is usually how someone feels, never what you're named...

What a silly life!

...there were always large piles of
bananas all over the place...There
were bananas in the kitchen,
bananas in the living room,
bananas in the bothroom and in
Good's bedroom. She had to sleep
on a pile of bananas and her pillow
was a bag of banana peels. The
more her mom taste-tested bananas
the more banana peels carpeted the
floor. Good was always slipping on
them and dropping her books.
And she was never allowed to
clean the house either. Her mom
and dad liked everything being in
a specific order, which meant that
there was no order whatsoever!

I told you this was a silly book. Good also had two other reasons for not liking her life. You'll find out about those when you read this fun book!

Can you imagine that where they lived everybody thought they were a regular family?! And her father had even become President of the country! Her mom had a job as a banana tester and was able to keep the family completely in bananas to the delight of everybody, but...Good...

And then one night Good sneaked out of the tree house and dug up her box of books--she couldn't leave them in her room because her mom or dad would eat them! She read that night a story about a Goblin Queen and then, looking up, she saw bright shooting stars and wished upon each one!

No one ever thought of Good as a good girl. They never thoughts of her as bad either. In fact, she was so ignored by so many people that no one really ever thought of her. She went to school and had no friends. She came home and had no friends. She walked around the neighborhood or the park or the beach and she still had no friends. But one day she started to change. And then she was noticed, not by people, but by a troop of goblins marching by in the Pots and Pans Parade!

~~~

First she met an elderly ghost named Mr. Fuddlebee...

who appears below in glasses and a derby...

And before Good knew it, she had turned green!

And, of course, the Goblin Band sang loud and free--

They knew right away that Good was their Queen!

Then the goblins lined up before Good and bowed so low to the ground that they all lost their balance and fell over. They got back to their feet after they fought with one another about who had lost their balance first. Finally, they stood once more in a line before her like soldiers at attention.
They saluted her by punching themselves in the face.
A short one spoke up. "All hail, Our Pie-ness."
"No," the tallest one hissed at him. "Not pie-ness. High-ness. Your highness is how you address the Queen."
"Maybe she has some pies," the first replied.
"I like mud pies," said a third.
"She doesn't look that high to me," said a fourth.
"Maybe it's cry-ness," a fifth goblin said. "She looks like a weeper."
"Did you say she's a keeper?" said a sixth. "I think we could throw her back and get another."
"We could keep her toes and throw away the rest," said not the seventh who was silent, but one of the others.
Then the tallest goblin, who had a long sword and was wearing the heaviest armor, stepped forward and silenced the other six.
He took out an old photograph, crept closer to Good, and held the photograph beside her face. The other six goblins looked at it and then they all nodded together, saying among themselves, "Yes, yes, they do look a lot alike."
Good studied the photograph too. She was surprised to see a girl who looked exactly like her, not the way she had been before she made the wish, but the way she was now, looking a little too much like these goblins. The girl in the photograph had a tall black crown, a long black dress, red eyes and lips, and she clearly very green skin.
"My fellow goblins," said the tall goblin beside her. "I believe we have finally found our long lost queen..."
!!!

Well, I must tell you that once Good realized what had happened, and the Goblins had declared her their Queen, why the story turns around totally! It's no longer silly--okay, maybe a little! Because, of course, Goblins are not silly, are they? But it was very hard to get used to all her new friends and followers... And, now, they had a very long way to go to get to their home and introduce the Queen to her kingdom!

And it wasn't going to be exactly an easy trip to get there!

They went through a Hollow Tree...Down a long Hallway...into the Hall of Countless Doors...Entered The Dream Kingdom...Chocolate Heaven!...and on to Nightmare Hollow...and they still weren't there! But each of these are the chapter titles of what you'll be reading... In all there are 35 chapters for those middle-grade children--and adults if you're like me--to enjoy! 

And Good the Goblin Queen proved to be both a wise and kind queen, even when faced with a giant coming into her Kingdom, she knew exactly what to do. All of the members of her kingdom knew what a wonderful Queen they had and all readers will see how they, too, can become wise yet kind when dealing with difficult situations!

One final thought--this is a new genre for me and may be for other adults. It's called Steampunk Sorcery... What it seemed to me to be was a way to be wildly imaginative and cross-genre...which it indeed was... But the majority of the novel was, to me, an old-fashioned fairy tale... In fact, I had a few thoughts about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as it related to the motley Pots and Pan crew.  Sure, the silly part up front will get your children interested, but, the basic story of Good the Goblin Queen is traditional, with the usual moral to the story, or, in this case, a number of individual, smaller stories... So, if you worry when you see this title, let me assure you that the material is entirely suitable for middle grade and above. After all, we all need to be a little silly, right?!

Highly recommended!


GABixlerReviews

Becket is the personal assistant to international best-selling author ANNE RICE. He has a BA in music composition, an MA in systematic theology, and an MS in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. He has been working for Ms. Rice since 2005, and he has spent that time learning from her the craft of writing.
You can find out more about him at www.becket.me