Return to Augie Hobble – A Supernatural Notebook and a Werewolf?

Return to Augie Hobble, by Lane Smith (May 2015, Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group), $16.99, ISBN: 9781626720541

Recommended for ages 9-13

Augie Hobble lives and works at Fairy Tale place, an amusement park managed by his father. The park – and Augie, to be honest – have seen better days. He’s bullied by the local jerks who come to the amusement park and by some of his coworkers, he’s just flunked Creative Arts and has to redo his project, and he can’t get his crush to notice him- but the kind of weird girl at the amusement park does.  Some some crazy, hairy thing shows up in the area and drools on Augie, and he swears that’s it: he’s turning into a werewolf. All of a sudden, things take a turn for the even worse, and Augie starts looking at the weird happenings in a completely new light.

I’m a huge Lane Smith fan, and was looking forward to this book. I thought I’d get a fun, wacky story about a kid and a werewolf, be it paranormal or comedy. What I got was a story that seems to have everything but the kitchen sink thrown in, with a lot of disjointed storytelling and multiple “what the heck was THAT?” moments. There’s a story about friendship, grief and loss, paranormal/supernatural, and tween romance, but it’s all thrown together and doesn’t have a cohesive narrative to pull it all together. I was really disappointed in this one.