Always October

By: Bruce Coville

Narrated by: Zac Fletcher, Nancy O'Connor

One stormy night, sixth-grader Jacob Doolittle finds a baby in a basket on his front porch. To Jake's surprise, his mother decides to care for the baby, hoping its mother will return. However that surprise is nothing compared to what happens to "Little Dumpling" the first time there's a full moon….

Soon Jake and his best friend, "Weird Lily" Carker, find themselves in "Always October", the secret world of monsters. Even more frightening, they discover that the safety of both the human world and Always October depends on them protecting Little Dumpling from a group of monsters out to kidnap him.

Thrills and laughs abound in this story that Publisher's Weekly dubbed a "spine-tingling rollick" and that the Bulletin of the Center for Children's books hailed for its "surprisingly charming blend of fantasy and mystery".

©2012 Bruce Coville (P)2013 Full Cast Audio

A Little Scary

Always October is a great book for kids. But it is a little scary. The age it would be good for I think is six years old and up. Bruce Coville is a great kids book writer.

fun

A fun story. The full cast does a great job. Children of all ages can enjoy this.

It's a good story. perfect for October.

This is well performed, and a good story to read/listen to around Halloween. Worth buying.

A good enough expansion of a classic story

This novel was based on Coville's classic short story "My Little Brother Is a Monster," which he published in 1993. This novel takes the basic plot of that story, but expands it considerably, adding new characters, spending more time in the world of the monsters, and updating the setting from 1993 to the 2012.

Some of the changes work better than others. Many of the new characters are appealing, especially Lily, the other narrator. It was good to see more of the Land of Always October, and I enjoyed learning more about what motivates the villainous monsters.

What I liked less was Coville's expansion of the role of Jake's family. In the original story he was a normal kid with a divorced mom trying to make ends meet who is thrust into an extraordinary situation. In the novel his family has preexisting ties to Always October going back generations. I think this weakens the atmosphere a bit, one of the most appealing aspects of the original story was the idea of a gritty modern family thrust into a world of weird fantasy. Here they were already fantastic before Little Dumpling arrives on their doorstep.

It was not a great book

I would not recommend this book to anyone because of the story
I only liked the beginning