The Unicorn Rescue Society: Sasquatch and the Muckleshoot

By Adam Gidwitz and Joseph Bruchac, Illustrated by Hatem Aly, Dutton children's Books, 2018, chapter book Fiction for ages 7-10

Over the top antics and adventure that stretch the limits of belief. As it’s a book about saving fantastic and magical creatures, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief. Also, it’s very funny and touching.

Elliot, a nervous nelly kinda kid, and Uchenna, a song-writing adventure seeker, were initiated into the Unicorn Rescue Society early in the school year (back in the first book, The Creature of the Pines) and since then have joined eccentric Professor Fauna to rescue mythical creatures around the world. In SASQUATCH AND THE MUCKLESHOOT, they’re off to Western Washington in search of the elusive Big Foot…er, Sasquatch.

These books are great for reluctant readers and as a first foray into fantasy and magical stories. They’re full of humor, this one take puns to another level, and fast-moving plots.

From a craft perspective what I really enjoyed about this title is the omniscient third person narration. I advise most clients to avoid an omniscient narrator because the pitfalls outweigh the benefits. The risks of head-hopping or bouncing around confusingly from place to place without transitional scenes or some other obvious break between scenes are hard to avoid.

But Gidwitz and Bruchac have used omniscient narration without head hopping and while managing to keep the plot entirely sequential. One way they manage that is they don’t write the direct thoughts of the characters. The narrator does share what characters are thinking and feeling, but not from directly inside the characters heads.

I also noticed that when the narrator does tell us something that can only be known to or felt by the character themself, there is space and time before the narrator reports the thoughts or feelings of any other character. The narration moves us away from the previous character through the scene, almost like a camera panning across the faces of the various characters in the scene before settling on another character, and only then does the narrator again take us into the inner workings of the next character’s mind—and again, all via narration, not direct thoughts.