[amtap book:isbn=9780689505935]
Is Emily’s neighbor Farmer Osboro really a werewolf?
Well, Emily certainly thinks he is, the way his face turns hairy and his teeth turn into fangs and his hands become claws and his eyes get red, but no one else does, and she’s certain that he knows that she knows his secret. So what is a young girl supposed to do to defend herself?
She finds help from her grandmother who is a witch, who gives her a book entitled “Professor Whammo’s Hypnosis For Beginners” but its full of big words that she doesn’t understand.
HOW TO HYPNOTIZE
Hypnosis is an art in which almost anyone can learn something they are something to put a great deal of something. The most something something in hypnosis is the use of your eyes. The something of your eyes is what something those who come in something with you and something you do to bend them to your will. Thus, the first thing you must do to learn hypnosis is to something the something of your eyes. Something something something –
Stuck with not knowing half ot the important words, Emily concentrates on the pictures.
The first drawing showed a man with a little beard rather like Prof. Whammo seated in a chair facing a young woman rather like the pretty young woman in the photograph, except in the drawing she was wide awake.
The next drawing was almost the same except that now Prof. Whammo had raised one hand above his head. The young woman was staring at him intensely.
The drawing after that was the most interesting of the three. It showed Prof. Whammo leaning forward so that he was only about a foot from the young woman. Little lightning flashes were coming out of his eyes. The woman was gaping at him in astonishment.
…
She flicked through the remainder of the book. There were many more pictures, but they all showed much the same thing, When Prof. Whammo made little lightning flashes come out of his eyes, people did what he told them, slept when he told them, and woke up when he told them.
Thus she tries and tries and tries and eventually learns how to shoot lightning bolts from her eyes that entrance people. Her technique works well enough on her grandmother’s cat Maggot and on her schoolmates, but Farmer Osboro is made of sterner stuff. She is almost about to be eaten alive by the angry werewolf when she remembers a spell her Grandmother casting and casts it on Farmer Oboro, turning him into a sparerib, which is promptly eaten by Maggot. But that’s not the end of Farmer Osboro, but it is an end to him becoming a werewolf, and for that he thanks Emily.
Commentary: Young adult and very young at that, but its kind of charming in its own way. Certainly very stereotypical, down to the pictures and the concept of lightning bolts from the eyes (or the hands),
Recommendation: Recommended for the cuteness factor. Its a nicely illustrated and cutely presented YA piece.