Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Basil
Grade 3–5—It's 1899, and 12-year-old Basil lives in a lighthouse on the coast of Maine. A dour, gnomish lad with an oversize head, he longs for adventure. When a balloon piloted by a kindly, mysterious man appears outside his window, the boy leaps aboard and soars off to a fantastic city in the sky. Professor Angus McGookin has brought him to Helios, the home of a secret, advanced society, and Basil is soon caught up in an adventure involving evil scientists, pteranodons, and mechanical armies. Miller's plentiful, full-color cartoons expand on the story, but there's little invention or character development in this rambling story. The narrative flow is clunky, with awkward shifts in perspective from Basil to that of an all-knowing narrator. Miller, creator of the comic strip "Non Sequitur," has crafted a hybrid picture book/short chapter book, but this tale fails to fulfill the promise of its attractive design.—Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public Library, CACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.