Category: Shorter Works

The animal kingdom’s greatest spy stars in a series of kids books

We here at the Family Valued detective agency, cricket nursery, and school for Humphrey Bogart impressions have randomly selected an 11-year-old from among the one immediately available.

Talk to me about Chet Gecko.

Chet Gecko is a private eye in different mysteries about elementary school animals. Chet Gecko has his own private eye agency and his assistant is Natalie, a mockingbird. He solves mysteries for people, like my-sister’s-gone-missing-can-you-do-something-about-it?

The Malted Falcon was really cool because I’ve seen the movie The Maltese Falcon. The book was really cool because they used some of my favorite Chet Gecko characters plus some of my favorite characters from the movie. In it, Chet Gecko tries to get the Malted Falcon, this ultimate falcon made out of candy. There are others who are after it also, so he has to try and get it before the others do. It was cool!

I’m currently reading Key Lardo. It’s about these two sisters who are birds. There’s this penguin who’s really fat and he’s a detective from England. His name is James Bland, which is really funny.

These are animals that live in an elementary school?

The animals are personified like they’re actual people except they’re animals. They’re kind of like those cat spy books, but he isn’t a spy and he isn’t a cat. He’s a gecko.

You’ve been reading this series for a long time.

Yeah, because the books take a long time to come out. It just seems like a long time.

Who would like these books?

Anybody who knows what a classic mystery is and knows what school is like. They are very funny, but Chet Gecko and Natalie make terrible jokes.

January, 2006

Having randomly selected a nine-year-old from within my household, I place two books in front of him: How to Train Your Dragon and How to Be a Pirate, both by Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, translated from the Old Norse by Cressida Cowell.

Have we ever met before?
Well, yes.

Are you familiar with these two tomes?
Oh, yes.

What are they about?
The first one is about Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, he is the son of one of the most feared Viking kings ever, and he is learning how to train his dragon, Toothless. Now that he has trained his dragon, the second one is about how he has to learn how to be a pirate- how to fight and to steer a ship. Hiccup has a very good friend named Fishlegs. His cousin is very mean and snotty, which is why his name is Snotlout. They have lots of running around and many insults. They have a few drawings for every few chapters, like there are pictures of each of the boys at the beginning. And the pages are pretty cut up. They don’t look so much like normal books because they have stains and stuff on them.

I’ve been meaning to ask you. Where did those stains come from?
On How to Train Your Dragon, there’s kind of claw slashes. On How to Be a Pirate, those are bloodstains.

I see. Who do you think would enjoy them?
Older kids who like to read and have a good sense of humor. If you’ve read any Geronimo Stilton books, then you would like these “tomes.”

August, 2005

Leaning as far back as possible, I strained to see the lip of Cenote de la Vida, seventy feet overhead. My seven-year-old’s head appeared, a marble in a helmet. I could hear none of the conversations at the cliff edge, so far above me. Thick ropes dangled a few feet away. Suddenly, my boy started dropping in slow, spurting arcs. Instinctively, with arms outstretched, I moved below the ropes, feeling like a very inadequate catcher in the rye.

That day, we were the only Americans in Tres Reyes, a tiny village in the middle of the Yucatan jungle. One grandmotherly local came out to chat with the three of us in stilted Spanish and unclear hand signals, building a bridge past my generation to my child’s. The community surrounds a huge cenote, a sinkhole formed millennia ago by the collapse of the limestone upon which the Yucatán floats. Some of the holes are filled with water; this one no longer was.

Later, we would hike through the jungle to Chimuch, a cavernous cenote accessible only through a thin hole. Descending down rickety candle-lit stairs, we found a beautiful fresh-water pond where we swam in cold clear water. Afterward, we climbed up the slick passageway into the sun, momentarily blinded as we emerged.

I had rappelled into the Tres Reyes cenote first, needing the reassurance that the gear was safe. This left Aaron beyond my reach in a visibly life-threatening situation. The ropes hung down beside me like tendrils stretching out from the future, the first view of my son beyond my protection, my control, my vision, and my life.