The Real Boy by Anne Ursu (review)

Eleven-year-old Oscar isn’t adept at social interactions, so he’s quite content to prepare herbs and potions in the basement of Master Caleb’s shop, befriending the cats and mostly keeping to himself. When Caleb, one of the few magic workers left in the world of Aletheia, is suddenly called away on business and the other shop boy goes missing, Oscar is forced to deal with the demands of Caleb’s wealthy clientele, fielding requests for love potions and youth tonics and struggling to interpret people’s perplexing ways. If that weren’t enough, the shop is attacked one night by an enormous, shadowy creature and the children of the village begin to fall ill. With most of the magic workers missing or away, it’s left up to Oscar and his new friend, a healer’s apprentice, to figure out what’s going on. As she did with Breadcrumbs (BCCB 10/11), Ursu constructs an elegantly sophisticated but age-appropriate tale upon the bones of a well-known story, in this case, Pinocchio, though the hint in the title is the only allusion until the final reel. An underdog boy saving the people who ridicule him is a familiar premise, but here it unfolds organically, echoing the fairy-tale tradition of mixing darkly sinister themes with moments of true heroism and bravery. Although most adult readers will recognize Oscar as on the spectrum, his guilelessness and bewilderment at social customs will likely ring true with plenty of children who have found themselves perplexed by the grownups’ conversations. Wryly humorous narrative asides would make this a pleasure to read aloud, either in the classroom or at home, and the striking digital illustrations, populated with wide-eyed, angular figures, hint at some of the book’s more enigmatic themes.