LitPick Review
"Ignatius Macfarland" by Paul Feig is a fast-paced, fantastical novel. Ignatius (AKA Iggy) is picked on at school and builds a makeshift rocket in a vain attempt to go into outer space and befriend aliens that won't make fun of him. When his rocket explodes, he wakes up in a parallel universe with wild creatures and peculiar surroundings. Iggy finds his old English teacher also blew himself up and landed in the same exact place. This teacher is the president of the land, and he has been enforcing the creatures, forcing them to bend to his will, and making them believe he came up with inventions that were really made back on Earth.
Opinion:
The suspense and action are phenomenal as Iggy and his friends are hunted down by the English teacher's army; he fears that Iggy and his friends will undermine / usurp him. A shocking twist is at the end, both with regards to the English teacher's motives for tyranny and with whether or not Iggy returns home. There is some romance in the novel as Iggy is infatuated with a girl from the parallel universe. However, it is not at all vulgar or perverse (Iggy is twelve, and the audience is meant to be preteen). The way in which Feig writes is simple yet unusually unique. "'K- kill her?' Mr. Arthur said, the words sticking in his throat like saltine crackers when you try to swallow a bunch of them without any water" (Feig, 320).
