Monster Club
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
From the award-winning screenwriter-director Darren Aronofsky and his screenwriting partner, Ari Handel, comes Monster Club. Their debut novel is the first book in a thrilling, new adventure series about growing up, letting go, and facing down your monsters.
Like almost everything in eleven-year-old Eric “Doodles” King’s life, King’s Wonderland—the amusement park his great-great grandfather founded—was seriously damaged when a hurricane hit his beloved Coney Island neighborhood. Now hungry property developers are circling the wreckage of the once-awesome King’s Wonderland, and Eric’s family is falling apart from the threat of losing it all.
If it weren’t for Monster Club—the epic roleplaying game that Eric and his friends created—Eric’s life would be pretty terrible. Drawing his favorite monster battling with his best friends’ creations is the one thing that still gets Eric excited. So when his friends start to think of Monster Club as a kid’s game and get more interested in other things, Eric just can’t deal. But then Eric happens across a long-lost vial of magic ink that brings their monster drawings to life, and suddenly, Monster Club isn’t just for fun anymore.
The monsters Eric and his friends created are wreaking havoc across Coney, and it’s on the Monster Club to save their city, the amusement park, and maybe, just maybe, Eric’s family, too. It’s a hilarious, heartfelt adventure from the creative minds of Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel that fans of Last Kids on Earth and Spy School are sure to love.
When their epic roleplaying game becomes dangerously real, what will it take for the Monster Club to save Coney Island?
A Friendship Story: Eric’s friends are drifting apart, but when their shared creations run wild, they’ll have to team up again to stop the chaos.Urban Fantasy Adventure: Magic ink makes their monster drawings leap off the page and onto the streets of Coney Island!Coming of Age: Eleven-year-old Eric isn’t just fighting monsters—he’s fighting to save his family’s legacy and hold his friendships together.Amusement Park Setting: From the Cyclone to the boardwalk, the battle to save King’s Wonderland unfolds in one of the world’s most iconic and magical locations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A 12-year-old's monster doodles come to life and terrorize his Brooklyn neighborhood in a quirky novel by collaborators Aronofsky and Handel (Noah). With his parents bickering more than ever over the fate of his father's Coney Island amusement park, King's Wonderland, Eric "Doodles" King is counting on Monster Club, a neighborhood group dedicated to developing the "coolest, smartest monster battle game of all time," to distract him. But as the club crumbles following a blowout with one of its members, who claims the group has outgrown the game, Doodles scrambles for a way to keep them together. As Doodles contends with tense relationships and literal monsters, flashbacks detailing a surrealist 1940s Coney Island and Doodles's great-great-grand-father fleeing a pogrom in Kyiv feature throughout. Disjointed pacing, a tone that unevenly vacillates between somber and silly, and thinly rendered characters impede what is an otherwise boisterous read. Classic tropes such as monsters coming to life and friends on the outs banding together to defeat a larger evil permeate this action-packed series opener, a savory match for fans of Doodleville. Final art not seen by PW. Ages 8–12.
