MEASLE AND THE WRATHMONK

Measle Stubbs, 10½ years old, lives in a "grim and gloomy and depressingly ugly" house with the evil and demented Basil Tramplebone, his legal guardian and "fourth cousin twelve times removed and, therefore, Measle's closest living relative." Stubbs, an orphan, is heir to a sum of money, on which Basil has set his sights. When Measle breaks the rules and plays with Basil's beloved train set, the man shrinks the boy down to just a few inches in size and tells him he will spend the rest of his life among the locomotives and fake trees. Measle meets others who have met a similar fate—an electrician, a local politician, a traveling encyclopedia salesman, etc.—and, with the help of a carrot, he frees them from their "plasssticated" (Basil's term) state. One of the rescued characters is a "wrathmonkologist," who explains that Basil is a Wrathmonk, a warlock who has "gone mad." When Basil casts a spell to turn Measle into a cockroach, the rescuees band together to lift a mirror shard, and the spell turns back on him; unleashing an entirely different predator. First novelist Ogilvy's Lilliputian scenes offer some keen suspense, and the story achieves a level of charm in the conclusion, but fans of the genre may find this too derivative to linger in the mind for long. Ages 8-13. (Sept.)