Review: Eyes in the Fishbowl by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Eyes in the Fishbowl
by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
When I was a kid, The Eygpt Game was one of my favorite books. When I heard its author, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, had passed away I decided to track down some of her other books and see what they were like. It was something I’d always meant to do as a kid. Eyes in the Fishbowl was one of her earlier works.
Dion’s father is a laid-back beatnik who teaches music lessons and rents out the rooms of their house to broke college students. His inability to collect the money due him drives Dion wild, so the young teen works odd jobs and fantasizes about managing a proper business, like the fancy Alcott-Simpson’s Department Store downtown. Over the years, Dion has befriended many of the clerks at the store, and he’s begun to notice they’re all on edge. Something is wrong at the store: things have gone missing, animals are let loose, and voices can be heard late at night when the customers have gone home. Curious, Dion begins to investigate, and soon discovers that a pretty girl named Sara is at the heart of the mysterious events. As he grows closer to Sara, Dion becomes sucked into a paranormal world that grows more and more dangerous the more he learns about it.
Eyes in the Fishbowl will either make you feel nostalgic or very aware of how dated the book has become. (The book was originally published in 1968.) The plot revolves around an independent department store, the kind of monolithic establishment that carries everything from clothes to books to pets. This style of shop was a dying beast even when I was a child - they are gone today. It places Dion’s story firmly in the past, even more than his arguments with his hippy/beatnik father or the descriptions of clothes that were the height of fashion in the 1960s. Heck, Dion’s childhood is so old school that he was crippled by polio and earned money as a shoeshine boy. This isn’t a criticism of the book, since I appreciate the atmosphere and the authenticity to the time period, but it also makes me wonder if The Egypt Game is similarly a product of its time, and I just didn’t notice when I was younger. I’ll have to re-read it and see.
Anyway, I like Dion. He’s a really interesting kid. Raised in a unconventional household (before that was cool) he has rebelled against his father’s way of life and wants to be a business man when he grows up. Dion’s dream is to work a normal job with a regular salary. It’s so weird to see a kid portrayed that way, and yet it makes total sense after you see a day or two of Dion’s home life. Dion is also a talented musician, we eventually learn, but he has put aside his guitar so that he can focus on making money. His attitude evolves over the course of the book, but it’s just so different to have a strait-laced kid rebelling against his artsy-fartsy father instead of the other way ‘round. Even Dion knows it’s strange, telling one of his father’s boarders that, “I can’t help it if I’m not rebelling in the right direction. Everybody has to rebel against what he has to rebel against. Not what somebody else has.”
Being so grounded in reality, Dion’s also not the sort of kid to get suckered into a supernatural mystery - and yet, there he is. He gets a crush on a pretty girl and starts sneaking into the Alcott-Simpson’s Department Store after hours to hang out with her. He knows something is off about the situation, and as one strange event follows another he starts to demand answers. However, awkward teen boys are still awkward teen boys, and Sara is easily able to misdirect his attention with a sunny smile or the threat of tears. But even as Dion’s being distracted, the reader’s still thinking about the mystery and putting the puzzle pieces together.
It’s a very solid children’s story, with a great main character and entertaining supernatural story. I mean, what kid doesn’t wonder what happens in a big shopping center at night? Supporting the text are some very excellent illustrations by Alton Raible. Like the story, they’re very much of the time period in which the story was written, but that doesn’t detract from them in any way.
5 out of 5 stars
To read more about Eyes in the Fishbowl, buy it or add it to your wishlist click here.
Peeking into the archives...today in:
2014: The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert
2013: The Serpent's Shadow (Kane Chronicles #3) by Rick Riordan
2012: The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great by Eva Stachiak
2011: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
2010: Possessed by Kate Cann
2009: The Last Days of Krypton by Kevin J. Anderson
by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
When I was a kid, The Eygpt Game was one of my favorite books. When I heard its author, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, had passed away I decided to track down some of her other books and see what they were like. It was something I’d always meant to do as a kid. Eyes in the Fishbowl was one of her earlier works.
Dion’s father is a laid-back beatnik who teaches music lessons and rents out the rooms of their house to broke college students. His inability to collect the money due him drives Dion wild, so the young teen works odd jobs and fantasizes about managing a proper business, like the fancy Alcott-Simpson’s Department Store downtown. Over the years, Dion has befriended many of the clerks at the store, and he’s begun to notice they’re all on edge. Something is wrong at the store: things have gone missing, animals are let loose, and voices can be heard late at night when the customers have gone home. Curious, Dion begins to investigate, and soon discovers that a pretty girl named Sara is at the heart of the mysterious events. As he grows closer to Sara, Dion becomes sucked into a paranormal world that grows more and more dangerous the more he learns about it.
Eyes in the Fishbowl will either make you feel nostalgic or very aware of how dated the book has become. (The book was originally published in 1968.) The plot revolves around an independent department store, the kind of monolithic establishment that carries everything from clothes to books to pets. This style of shop was a dying beast even when I was a child - they are gone today. It places Dion’s story firmly in the past, even more than his arguments with his hippy/beatnik father or the descriptions of clothes that were the height of fashion in the 1960s. Heck, Dion’s childhood is so old school that he was crippled by polio and earned money as a shoeshine boy. This isn’t a criticism of the book, since I appreciate the atmosphere and the authenticity to the time period, but it also makes me wonder if The Egypt Game is similarly a product of its time, and I just didn’t notice when I was younger. I’ll have to re-read it and see.
Anyway, I like Dion. He’s a really interesting kid. Raised in a unconventional household (before that was cool) he has rebelled against his father’s way of life and wants to be a business man when he grows up. Dion’s dream is to work a normal job with a regular salary. It’s so weird to see a kid portrayed that way, and yet it makes total sense after you see a day or two of Dion’s home life. Dion is also a talented musician, we eventually learn, but he has put aside his guitar so that he can focus on making money. His attitude evolves over the course of the book, but it’s just so different to have a strait-laced kid rebelling against his artsy-fartsy father instead of the other way ‘round. Even Dion knows it’s strange, telling one of his father’s boarders that, “I can’t help it if I’m not rebelling in the right direction. Everybody has to rebel against what he has to rebel against. Not what somebody else has.”
Being so grounded in reality, Dion’s also not the sort of kid to get suckered into a supernatural mystery - and yet, there he is. He gets a crush on a pretty girl and starts sneaking into the Alcott-Simpson’s Department Store after hours to hang out with her. He knows something is off about the situation, and as one strange event follows another he starts to demand answers. However, awkward teen boys are still awkward teen boys, and Sara is easily able to misdirect his attention with a sunny smile or the threat of tears. But even as Dion’s being distracted, the reader’s still thinking about the mystery and putting the puzzle pieces together.
It’s a very solid children’s story, with a great main character and entertaining supernatural story. I mean, what kid doesn’t wonder what happens in a big shopping center at night? Supporting the text are some very excellent illustrations by Alton Raible. Like the story, they’re very much of the time period in which the story was written, but that doesn’t detract from them in any way.
5 out of 5 stars
To read more about Eyes in the Fishbowl, buy it or add it to your wishlist click here.
Peeking into the archives...today in:
2014: The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert
2013: The Serpent's Shadow (Kane Chronicles #3) by Rick Riordan
2012: The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great by Eva Stachiak
2011: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
2010: Possessed by Kate Cann
2009: The Last Days of Krypton by Kevin J. Anderson