The Other Side of Town (review)

A New York city cab driver is waved down by a strange fellow in a wacky mint-green jumpsuit and hat who requests to go to "Schmeeker Street" on "the other side of town." At the touch of a button on the stranger's remote control, a seeming dead end gives way to a parallel but very different city: it's dotted with pink and mint dome-shaped houses, and places, things, and people have names that rhyme with normal New York people, places, and things (the driver has to take the Finkon Tunnel, named for Gabe Finkon, to get across town, and the stranger roots for the Spankees). Upon returning to his own side of town, the cabbie finds a mysterious change in his family: everyone's wearing the same kind of mint hat as the stranger, and his wife is serving "tweet loaf with bravy" ("It's very popular on the other side of town!"). Many kids will be amused by the reality-based silly names and intrigued by the idea of another place existing in conjunction with a real, well-known one. Agee's writing is immediate and energetic, and his cartoonish, pastel-toned art is attractively strengthened by chunky, smudgy black outlines. The strange passenger is a short, rotund, mustachioed gentleman who carries a pink satchel, and his odd green hat is accented by an upright pink spiral, giving him a humorous contrast to the lanky cab driver in his powder-blue suit and driving cap. This amiably Twilight Zone-esque story could be an amusing prompt for a creative-writing project or useful as an illustration of rhyming or nonsense words.