Daisy Goes to the Moon: A Daisy Ashford Adventure

Geary (the Treasury of Murder series) ably adapts Klickstein’s whimsical novel, written in the naive voice of real-life Victorian child author Daisy Ashford (1881–1972). Apple-cheeked, pinafore-sporting Daisy is sitting on her lawn when, out of nowhere, a rocket ship lands and disgorges a black-clad man from the moon named Zogolbythm. Just like that, she jets off on a space adventure: wandering an underground moon colony, battling alien monsters and invaders from Venus, and meeting a visitor from the future who comes bearing a television. Daisy’s escapades capture the stream-of-consciousness rhythm of a story told by an actual child, and Klickstein’s narration copies Ashford’s idiosyncratic syntax and spelling: “She sat there sometimes jotting down this or that as idears did pop into her head.” As events loop around like the moon in orbit, the plot becomes increasingly self-referential and Daisy wonders, “Am I writing this story or is it writing me?” Geary’s artwork, with touches that recall turn-of-the-century comic strips and antique printing techniques, is perfectly suited to Victoriana. Readers with limited patience for nonsense may grow impatient with the story’s disjointed inventiveness. But by Daisy’s own standards—“You cannot be peculiar enough as a true writer, and the only sin is boredom”—it more than succeeds. (Jan.)