Henry Cicada's Extraordinary Elktonium Escapade

Gr 4–6—As far as Henry Cicada, a boy in pursuit of normalcy, is concerned, Elktonium, a metal invented by his mother right before she died of cancer, is utterly useless. The humiliatingly huge, shimmering green, tropical, Mr. Clean-scented pair of Elktonium sneakers his father makes him wear on his first day of sixth grade just proves it. Therefore, Henry is shocked when the strange Elktonium pyramid in the yard catapults him into another dimension (dimensions 47–49, to be exact), where he finds himself in the imagination of a girl named Lulu. Lulu's aunt Tiffany seeks to destroy the girl's imagination entirely, and Henry makes it his goal to thwart her schemes. Both Henry Cicada's warping of reality into wacky allegory and the antics of Tiffany, its fake-tanned, cowboy-booted villainess, recall the work of Roald Dahl, whom Teague acknowledges with a reference to The BFG. Meanwhile, the clever absurdity of the dialogue and the constant use of wordplay evoke the same delight as Norton Juster's classic, The Phantom Tollbooth. Henry's own innate outrageousness proves his greatest strength as he embarks on his plutonium- and rocket-powered escapades, and his fast-paced adventures will win over avid and reluctant readers alike.