We here in the Family Valued emerald room, journalist freak show, and jelly bean cafeteria have randomly selected an eleven-year-old from among the one immediately available.

Tell me about Abadazad.

Abadazad is about this teenage girl, Kate, who gets transported into this fictional world and she has to find her brother Matty who disappeared. It’s bit book and a bit comic book. I actually like the comic book more.

Fictional world?

Somebody actually wrote books about the world of fantasy that she’s in. It’s called Abadazad. All of the books were by Franklin O. Davies. He isn’t a real person. It’s more like a fantasy world because it has stuff that wouldn’t really exist, like it has these giant fish. I’m talking bigger than the biggest tuna. I liked the frog. I really like fishes and he’s a fish person. He’s this guy who lives underwater and he’s a kind of fish-looking thing. And he lives in the stomach of this humongous fish. He has these snakes which can teleport you around. He has these bubbles which can tell you the future and the past.

So you’re saying it’s a book about a girl getting lost in the books that she’s reading? Doesn’t that get confusing?

That she has read to her little brother. Sometimes, yes. The world she is in is actually by a person which just doesn’t make sense. Kate lives in Brooklyn, New York, sometime pretty modern. Abadazad is somewhere, sometime.

You’ve read a lot of stuff by J.M. DeMatteis?

Because he’s a very good writer. He wrote good comics, too: a lot of Justice League comic books.

Would you recommend these books?

Yes, I would to people who like comic books and fantasy.

March, 2007