PIXIE VAN DIMPLE AND THE WRONG KIND OF PLASTIC

A seaside vacation turns into a monster attack when plastic ocean garbage undergoes a horrifying transformation in this second installment of an illustrated children’s book series.

Twelve-year-old, red-haired Pixie Van Dimple and her White family have planned a beach day. While off to get fish and chips for lunch, Pixie and her sister, Trixie, tell their father they’re going to use the bathroom—but they are actually heading to the candy store to buy sweets. As they walk back, they decide that since they can’t spot a trash bin, they’ll just dump their garbage in the ocean. It’s the last straw for the sea: Pixie and Trixie’s trash sets off a catastrophic transformation, and a garbage monster rises from the ocean. While the uncredited illustrations keep their bright colors and friendly cartoon feel, the situation described in the text is dire: “All around the girls, death and destruction ensued, the likes of it never witnessed before / On a scale of 1 to ten since you ask, this was spectacularly HARD CORE!” Leaving the sisters behind, the rhyming narrative amps up the worldwide chaos, eventually relating the use of space lasers to solve the plastic mess. Meanwhile, Pixie and Trixie miraculously survive in a huge beach hole dug by overzealous vacationers. Though the monster mayhem highlights the disaster of plastic in the ocean, the tale moves away from the sisters, who just cause the cataclysm and then persevere through no efforts of their own. McAllister uses rhyming phrases of different lengths, with frequent interjections that throw off the scansion. In addition to the complex vocabulary (synchronised quintet, sensitive dermis) that would challenge the picture-book crowd, the uneven font makes for a difficult reading experience. Strong, independent middle-grade readers are the likely target audience for the text, but the flat cartoon images, sanitized of the narrative’s violence, feel aimed at a much younger group. The London author’s comedic tone and action-packed story will appeal to budding environmentalists. But the clunky format and design place the tale between age categories.

Gripping monster mischief highlights an environmental problem but gives the protagonists little to do.