Plucker - Softcover

Brom

4.3

2,394 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810996022 ISBN 13: 9780810996021

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, 2011

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

The Plucker, now updated with new art and an afterword from world-renowned dark fantasy artist Brom, is a window into a world where fairy-tale tradition collides with vileness and depravity, love and heroism, suffering and sacrifice. In this shadowy land of make-believe, Jack and his box are stuck beneath the bed with the dust, spiders, and other castaway toys, and forced to face a bitter truth: Children grow up, and toys are left behind. Jack thinks this is the worst fate that can befall a toy. But when the Plucker, a malevolent spirit, is set loose upon the world of make-believe, Jack is thrust into the unlikely role of defending Thomas, the very child who abandoned him, and learns that there are worse ends for a toy than abandonment. As desperation mounts, Jack is thrown together with Thomas’s other toys—Monkey, the Nutcracker, and the ethereally beautiful porcelain doll Snow Angel—as they struggle to rise above their simple roles as playthings and save the boy they love.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Brom is the world-renowned illustrator whose vision has graced a wide range of fantasy and sci-fi fiction, games, and films, including Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 5 Up–If the Velveteen Rabbit had a satanic bent, it would have much in common with the Plucker, the spirit doll that young Thomass father brings him from Africa in 1942. In Broms fevered imagination, the love and imaginative play with which children imbue their toys–their gusto, as he terms it–can be sucked out and turned to evil purposes, destroying the soul of the child and enlivening creatures too horrible to contemplate. It is up to Thomass old Jack-in-the-box to prevent the boy from such vitiation. Aided by the herbal and hoodoo wisdom of Mabelle, Thomass stalwart old nurse, and a few other plucky cast-off toys, Jack challenges the monstrous Foulthings spawned by the Plucker and vanquishes its malevolence. Broms descriptive powers are revealed equally in his prose and his illustrations. The paintings are so detailed and so layered that they yield their secrets further the more closely they are examined. Poring over them is an exercise in fascinated revulsion. Almost every page–from the opening, What the hell? to the resolution–contains abominations calculated to stir up nightmares. Despite its bittersweet, triumphant ending [...] this book will stir discomfort everywhere it goes. Brom is surely aware of this, as he is photographed on the dust jacket, poised to consume an eviscerated teddy bear with an oversize fork and spoon. Not everyone will be amused, and not everyone should be exposed to this macabre tour de force.–Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Public Library, NY
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.