Book filled with sly humor and surreal situations

'The Trolls'
by Polly Horvath

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16

Review by Nancy Matson

September 14, 1999
Web posted at: 2:00 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT)

(CNN) -- Still waiting to get your hands on the third Harry Potter installment? You would do well to pass the time reading Polly Horvath's lively new juvenile novel, "The Trolls." Horvath's sly sense of humor and gift for surreal situations will appeal to girls and boys who have graduated from the underwear and doggy doo humor common for the younger set (no offense to beloved author Dav Pilkey and his comrades.) It also provides an enticing, if strange, introduction to Canada for American kids ignorant of our neighbor to the north. Horvath's Aunt Sally describes Canada as a place of constant parties. What kind of parties, you ask? The kind with cupcakes!

"The Trolls" spans the length of Aunt Sally's visit to Ohio to babysit nieces Melissa and Amanda and nephew Pee Wee while the children's parents, the Andersons, are away on vacation. Though the children are initially skeptical of their aunt, who they've never met and have rarely heard of, they quickly warm up to her offbeat ways. And why wouldn't they? She lets them rifle through her belongings. She builds Pee Wee a tree house. She does her nieces hair up in beehive bubbles -- just like hers. But her real gift is storytelling, and the stories she tells are not like any they've ever heard before.

She recounts the mysterious murder of Mrs. Gunderson, the dog that lived next door to Aunt Sally's childhood home. She describes "rogue waves" that carry unsuspecting people out to sea, and the health benefits of gnawing on sticks. And who could resist a yarn about the Fat Little Mean Girl, based on her name alone? But it's the trolls that come up again and again, which loom large in the childhood of Aunt Sally and her siblings. These mythical creatures lived by the ocean and would scamper off with whatever -- and whoever -- was left for them.

Though much of "The Trolls" is laugh-out-loud funny, it's also infused with the sadness of Aunt Sally's strained relationships with her siblings, notably her brother, Robbie -- Melissa, Amanda and Pee Wee1s father.

Horvath's novel may be the closest many kids will ever get to having a delightful aunt sit at the foot of their bed, make them hot cocoa, and tell them crazy stories that are somewhere between truth and fiction.

Nancy Matson is the author of the juvenile novel "The Boy Trap," due out this fall from Front Street/Cricket Books. For information about her Website at www.nancymatson.com.