About the Author

Bill Brittain's tales of the rural New England village of Coven Tree are well loved by children of all ages. The Wish Giver was a Newbery Honor Book; it and Devil's Donkey were both named ALA Notabled Children's Books as well as School Library Journal Best Books. Dr. Dredd's Wagon of Wonders was a 1988 Children's Editors' Choice (ALA Booklist), and Professor Popkin's Prodigious Polish was named a "Pick of the Lists" by American Bookseller.Mr. Brittain has written many other delightful books, which have also received high acclaim. Among these are All the Money in the World, which won the Charlie May Simon Children's Book Award and which has been adapted for an ABC-TV Saturday Special; and The Fantastic Freshman, which was named an ALA Recommended Book for Reluctant Young Adult Readers.Bill Brittain lives with his wife, Ginny, in Asheville, North Carolina.

Reviews

Gr 3-6-Life in the new housing development of Rolling Acres Estates is pretty dull for seventh grader Frank Dunn, until the day he finds himself conversing with a red-and-white fire hydrant. The hydrant explains that it/he is really Zymel, a policeman of the Shilad, an alien race of shape-changers, which he proves by assuming the shape of a book, an airplane model, a kitten, a girl, and more, over the course of the story. Having crash-landed on Earth and lost the dangerous prisoner he was escorting to an asteroid exile, Zymel needs Frank's help. Their urgent mission is to recapture Fek, the criminal, and find the spacecraft he has hidden away before he can repair it and go on to do more evil throughout the universe. This is science fiction of the most basic kind-a Saturday-matinee style adventure in just over 100 pages of fairly large print. With no room for serious character development or scientific explanations of the forms of space travel and alien life presented, plot is everything, and it moves rapidly to a mildly surprising and definitely satisfying conclusion. It is reminiscent of Brittain's The Fantastic Freshman (HarperCollins, 1988) in the way that it drops a mysterious alien presence into the lives of some very ordinary kids, and for that reason may appeal to a wider audience than just sci-fi fans. It may also appeal to older reluctant readers.-Susan L. Rogers, Chestnut Hill Academy, PA

Derivative and pedestrian, Brittain's SF/fantasy tale borrows the intriguing concept of shape-shifting wholesale from the TV series Deep Space 9 , but runs it into the ground with a static plot. Frank Dunn, the narrator, discovers a marooned alien named Zymel, who looks like a small blob of gray Jell-O but can instantly change into anything or anyone at will. Frank, his friend Lauren Hobischer and Zymel then scramble to find Zek, Zymel's evil rival, who arrives slightly ahead of his alien counterpart and intends to use his form-altering gift to wreak havoc among humans. While Frank and Lauren are reasonably lively and well-drawn, the shape-shifting sequences rarely spark or challenge the imagination, and the ``surprise'' ending falls flat. Moreover, the recurring, hokey dialogue cliches seem more suited to a Tom Mix adventure yarn than to '90s science fiction. Ages 8-12. (May)