TV REX
John Nickle, TV REXJohn Nickle
Nickle, whose The Ant Bully
dealt with a grim boy who tortured insects, introduces another young misfit in this escapist fantasy. Rex is a gothic child with a sprout of jet-black hair on his ovoid, pale head. He once socialized with his grandfather, "But now that Grandpa was gone, Rex was lonely." With his grandfather unaccounted for—and mentioned strictly in the past tense—Rex slouches in the glow of his television screen. When the TV breaks, Rex climbs inside it to cry. His tears spark a convoluted sequence of events, and he acquires a magical remote control that lets him participate in soap operas, commercials and pro-wrestling bouts. During Rex's adventures, Nickle makes pictorial allusions to wood-grain TV sets and classic shows like Lassie , Flipper
and Gilligan's Island . He frames Rex's televised antics in black rectangles, and bathes the episodes in lurid blue, orange and white. Yet the nostalgic references and the virtual-reality premise make an uneasy fit, and the title's dinosaur theme goes unremarked (as does the word "cable"). Further, Grandpa himself rescues Rex: "I go to Florida for a couple of months and this place falls apart!" he chortles. Turns out that Grandpa was not dead but on vacation, and his arrival puts a mordant twist on Rex's melancholy looks and behavior. For TV-obsessed kids, this may be a fun flight of fancy, though, like a flea-market jumble of antiques and old junk, Nickle's disparate odds and ends never coalesce. Ages 5-7. (Mar.)
closeDetailsReviewed on: 02/26/2001
Genre: Children's
Nickle, whose
Reviewed on: 02/26/2001
Genre: Children's
