Ryan Uytdewilligen

This book was the perfect match up as a picture book versus comic book. It’s very reminiscent of the old Disney shorts where the narrator would be telling you about something and the characters would take over. The main character of the story is absolutely positive that they are not in the right story. Their story is not a spaceship, it’s not a knight, a dragon, etc. The author and the main character are trying to find the perfect name of the perfect story and what one is reading about. This is all done with a very clever mix of graphic novel and picture books style with interesting and impactful narration. This is a five-star read. The author has helps kids find what type of stories they like, through a glossary of story types at the end of the book.… (mer)

Ryan Uytdewilligen has conceived a cute story idea with This Is Not My Story. His main character, a young boy, keeps protesting about the storyline in which the author places him. He objects to flying a spaceship, riding a giant hedgehog, being a cowboy, a knight, and a detective, among other ideas. The author and the boy keep arguing about what the author is attempting to write: "I've never flown a spaceship and I definitely don't believe in aliens." While the concept is fun, and the author devises entertaining scenarios, the book fell a bit flat for me at the end. The boy's solution for a plotline didn't grab me. However, most of the book is enjoyable and introduces children to many fiction genres. David Huyck's illustrations were tremendously detailed, and I loved having the boy climb out of the book page when he didn't like the story. At the end of the book, the author addresses the reader to tell us about different genres of books. It's a good list with simple explanations. This is a pleasing book to teach children about types of books.
Thank you to NetGalley and Kids Can Press for the ARC of this book.… (mer)

Disclaimer: An advance reader’s copy of this book in digital format was provided in exchange for review by the author, via Library Thing.

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This is an ARC. One can only hope that, before the final paper edition is set loose on an unsuspecting public, SOMEONE will do a final blue-pencil run-through of it (NOT another Spell-Check, fellas!) and clean up the plethora of homophone errors. I think the manuscript includes every foul/fowl, not/naught, cord/chord, shuddered/shuttered, spec/speck mixup possible along with a couple of plain old wrong-word-itis errors … “poised possessions” and an apparent mixup between deprivation and depravity that jar the reader right out of the story. This is just sloppy writing, people, and combined with Uytdewilligen’s odd stylistic choices and his tendency to break the fourth wall and lapse into a first-person folksy narration, it gives the whole thing the aura of having been written by a precocious but undisciplined adolescent.

And maybe while they’re at it, that blue-pencil-wielding Someone can whack out about 40% of this behemoth (490 pages in pdf) and turn it into the sleek little barracuda it was meant to be.

Because Uytdewilligen has a nugget of a story here, about hope and redemption and forgiveness and the power of love, but he can’t seem to get out of his own way long enough to tell it.

It all starts when a mysterious figure appears, via taxi, in a downtown Hollywood park, with a message to “Ditch the device. Accept the wine. Say yes to Victoria,” and other murky homilies. Is he an angel? A garden-variety nut-case? Or is he Charlie Fritz’ father, Bernie, returning ten years after he supposedly drowned, out for one last hurrah of boozing, philandering, and nose candy?

Charlie, whose career as an agent has just gone down the toilet, would definitely like to know, so much so that he breaks the old man out of the hospital where the cops have hauled him for observation, and the two go on the lam, hotly pursued by said police, a psychiatrist, and representatives of the Vatican. What follows is a madcap chase across Hollywood, as Bernie (now re-christened Clarence, after a famous screen angel) is immortalized on the internet via thousands of cell phone clips, and his fandom grows into a mania. Charlie, in attempting to monetize the whole thing, keeps getting them deeper and deeper into fine-tuning (i.e. falsifying) Clarence’s powers and booking him into public appearances which inevitably become unmitigated disasters.

The thing finally begins to come together along about midpoint, but the slapstick chase and frantic pacing continue interminably, with the last 150 or so pages spinning absolutely out of control. There is, finally, a resolution of most of the main plot threads, and the reader is left with the hope that Charlie will actually become a better person as a result of his experiences.

Uytdewilligen has some cogent things to say about the corrosive effects of the virtual world, the fleeting nature of fame, and the general nastiness of the “infotainment” business. There are some genuinely funny bits in this novel, but the reader doesn’t really have time to relish them before the next chaotic scene erupts.… (mer)