Dory Fantasmagory by Abby Hanlon

Hey, Story Seekers!

Today's expedition involves an imaginary monster, an evil witch, a fairy godmother who is a man, an extended stretch of pretending to be a dog, and one six-year-old girl whose older brother and sister would really like five minutes of peace.

They are not getting it.

Dory Fantasmagory is written and illustrated by Abby Hanlon. Dory's family calls her Rascal, which doesn't take long to make sense.

If you're new to Book Explorers, I'm Jungle Jimmy the Book Explorer, children's author, dad, and longtime performer for kids. Readit the Book Worm is my childlike sidekick. I notice how a story works when you put it in front of kids.

Readit wants to know why the fairy godmother has a beard.

We'll get there.

Book Breakdown

Dory is six, the youngest of three, and she desperately wants her older brother Luke and her older sister Violet to play with her.

They have other ideas.

Dory talks too much. She asks strange questions. She bothers them. And she is permanently wrapped up in an imaginary world involving Mary, her monster friend.

Luke and Violet decide they need a solution.

So they invent Mrs. Gobble Gracker.

She is a witch who steals little girls.

This is meant to get Dory to leave them alone.

Instead they have handed Dory's imagination a full tank of gas and the keys.

Mrs. Gobble Gracker becomes part of Dory's world. So does Mr. Nuggy, Dory's extremely unusual fairy godmother. Her imaginary adventures start mixing into ordinary family life until you're following her through both at once.

At one point Dory decides that becoming a dog is a perfectly reasonable way to protect herself from Mrs. Gobble Gracker.

And she commits.

Even at the doctor's office.

Woof.

What Abby Hanlon gets right is that Dory's imagination never feels like fantasy sprinkled on top of a realistic story.

Dory actually operates this way.

One thought becomes another. A warning from her siblings becomes a witch. A made-up character starts participating in whatever is happening. Real objects wander into imaginary adventures and come back out somewhere else.

That makes the story unpredictable. It also makes Dory feel exactly six.

Hanlon's pencil drawings are a huge part of that.

This is not a chapter book where you read three pages and earn a small picture at the end. Drawings turn up constantly. Some carry speech balloons. Some carry the action. Some show us the monsters Dory is seeing in her head.

They also look loose enough to belong in Dory's world.

That matters. A polished, perfectly controlled illustration style would feel wrong here. Dory's brain is not polished and controlled.

Her brain is busy.

Very busy.

Dial published it on October 9, 2014, at 160 pages, and the current edition runs 176. It took starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal, a Golden Kite Honor, and a spot on the ALA's Notable Children's Books list.

For teachers and librarians: Penguin Random House lists it at ages 7 to 10, grades 2 to 5, Lexile 650L, Fountas & Pinnell M. I'm not publishing ATOS, AR points or a word count here, because I could not find records for those I'd stand behind, and a reading level that's off by a grade is worse than no reading level at all.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

This is the third book we've reviewed for this stretch of the shelf, and now I can see the staircase.

Dog Man gives kids a full graphic-novel experience.

The Bad Guys starts moving them toward illustrated chapter books.

Then Dory walks in.

There is more prose here. The chapters ask more of the reader. The story wanders, because Dory wanders.

But Hanlon does not take the pictures away.

That's a smart place to put a child who is ready for something longer but still wants visual company on the page.

The wandering is worth flagging, though.

Dory's imagination doesn't travel in straight lines, and neither does the book.

For the right kid that's half the fun. You never know what this girl is about to turn into or which imaginary character is coming through the door next.

A reader who wants everything neat and orderly may find Dory exhausting.

Her brother and sister certainly do.

I understand them.

Which is the other reason the book works for me.

Hanlon doesn't make Dory adorable by making everyone around her adore everything she does. Luke and Violet get genuinely irritated. Their little sister really does interrupt them. She really does talk a lot. She can be a pain.

But underneath the noise Dory wants something simple.

She wants her brother and sister to let her in.

There's a difference between a story telling kids "your imagination is wonderful" and a story showing what it's actually like to live beside somebody whose imagination never switches off.

This one does the second thing.

Sometimes it's hilarious.

Sometimes it's tiring.

Usually both at once.

That's far more useful than pretending a wildly imaginative six-year-old would be easy company every minute of the day.

Readit's Review

Mrs. Gobble Gracker has WAY too many teeth.

That's first.

Second, if my brother told me there was a witch coming to kidnap me, I would not just go, "Okay."

I would need details.

Where does she live?

How does he know?

Has he SEEN her?

Also, Dory pretending to be a dog at the doctor's office is funny, but you have to stop being a dog eventually.

Especially if the doctor has a needle.

That is when I would become a person again.

Mr. Nuggy is weird too.

He's supposed to be a fairy godmother but he has a beard.

I don't know why.

I don't think Dory knows why either.

I like Mary best. If you're going to have an imaginary friend, a monster is better than just some regular person.

You can already find regular people.

What Others Think

Here's where Dory gets interesting.

The positive reaction is strong. Goodreads has the first book at 4.23 out of 5 from 6,122 ratings and 974 reviews, and readers keep mentioning the same things: laughing out loud, Dory's imagination, how many illustrations there are, and how well it works as a step into chapter books.

One reviewer who works with children's books said it had her "laughing out loud" and that she'd be recommending it to kids at her library.

Another reported using it with elementary students: second graders laughed through the read-aloud, and first graders wanted to check it out before the story was finished. That's the kind of report I pay attention to, because it tells us what happened when the book met an actual room of kids rather than one adult in a chair.

The professional response was strong too. Kirkus praised how convincingly Hanlon captures Dory's voice. School Library Journal singled out the mix of pencil drawings, word balloons, short and long sentences and brief episodic chapters, which is a precise description of why the book carries a developing reader.

But Dory is not universally adored, and I'd rather say so.

Some readers find her genuinely annoying. Others think Luke and Violet are too mean to her. One enjoyed the imaginary characters but felt the Mrs. Gobble Gracker business ran too long.

I believe all three reactions.

Dory is a lot.

That's the character.

If her constant chatter and imaginary detours make you laugh, there is plenty more where that came from.

If they make you want to go hide in a quiet room with Luke and Violet, I understand that too.

Belly Laugh Scale

4 out of 5: Big-Time Belly Laughs

Dory earns the four because the humor isn't sitting off to one side waiting for a punchline.

It comes out of the way she thinks.

A kidnapping witch invented by irritated siblings becomes real enough to battle. She decides she is a dog and keeps going long past the point where most people would call the game finished. Her fairy godmother is a bearded man named Mr. Nuggy.

Then Hanlon's drawings arrive and make it stranger.

The reader evidence backs the laughing up, including reports of a classroom full of second graders laughing through it.

I'm stopping at four because Dory's particular flavor of chaos won't hit everybody the same way, and the reviews say so plainly.

But when it hits, it hits.

Final Explorer Verdict

I'd put Dory Fantasmagory in front of second and third graders ready for a longer chapter book but still wanting pictures everywhere, kids with enormous imaginations, younger siblings who know the specific pain of being told they're too little, and readers who like characters that don't behave neatly.

It fills a real hole.

This isn't another graphic novel.

It isn't another book built from tiny chunks of text.

It's a genuine chapter-book experience with enough drawings and speech balloons that a developing reader never feels abandoned on the page.

The reader has to stretch.

But the book stretches with them.

If your reader isn't there yet, Dog Man and The Bad Guys are the two steps before this one, and all three sit on our list of the best books for 7-year-olds.

And somewhere along the way they'll meet a bearded fairy godmother named Mr. Nuggy.

Readit still wants an explanation.

I'm not giving him one.

Some things are better left to Dory.

Until our next expedition, keep exploring those books.

Jungle Jimmy & Readit