Teenreads.com -- FREAKS: ALIVE ON THE INSIDE! by Annette Curtis Klause

FREAKS: ALIVE ON THE INSIDE!
Annette Curtis Klause
Simon Pulse
Fiction
ISBN-10: 0689870388
ISBN-13: 9780689870385
336 pages

Seventeen-year-old Abel Dandy has a problem. He is too normal. In a home that is far from typical, Abel lives in Faeryland, a carnival-type land where visitors can see performances that include "an extravaganza of amazing oddities, mystifying the audience with their uncanny skills, death-defying deeds, and wondrous physiognomy." Abel's parents are performers where they can put their anomalies to use. Papa has no legs and performs as the bottom half of a torso in Uncle Jack's illusion act. And Abel's Mama has no arms, but can knit up a storm with her toes. Abel's parents are lucky because in 1899 there are not many ways for people like them, "freaks," to make a living.

Abel has lived in Faeryland most of his life. Along with his parents and uncle, he has grown up with an extended family of dwarves, fat ladies and Siamese twins, as well as Phoebe the Dog-Faced Girl and her brother Apollo the Puppy Boy. Abel is the only one without an act or oddity. He fears that if he stays in Faeryland, he'll be doomed to a life with Phoebe as his wife. She is the only girl his age at home, and he has a brief romance with her, but inside he longs for a normal girl --- one without facial hair.

Abel is tired of feeling like a normal freak among the oddities and a "freak" among the townies. He decides to run away to seek fortune and find the girl of his dreams. Ironically, a girl does come to him --- in his dreams. Abel recently was given an Egyptian scarab ring from one of the Siamese twins. The twin claimed that a scholar told her to give the ring to Abel because a goddess in a dream told her to give it to him. As soon as Abel has the ring in his possession, he begins to have strange dreams about a mysterious foreign woman he calls Lady Adventure. In his dreams, he falls in love with her, watches her dance, and then listens to her pleas for help.

As Abel sets out into the world beyond Faeryland, he finds that life is not as great as he had hoped. He isn't any happier and often has to do horrible work under even worse conditions. He also learns that the outside world treats people like his parents and friends back home terribly. Often times, they are sent to places like asylums and are given no chance at a life for themselves. Then, Abel comes upon a traveling freak show, Dr. Mink's Monster Menagerie, with a terrible secret, and his adventure becomes even more dangerous but also more important.

FREAKS: ALIVE ON THE INSIDE! is an adventure novel with a historical twist. As author Annette Curtis Klause notes at the back of the book, many of the characters in this story were based on real-life human oddities from the late 1800s. This, perhaps, is the most interesting aspect of the story. The characters are clearly unique, and the story is driven. At times, the dream sequences with Lady Adventure seemed to come out of nowhere, but in the end, it comes together more clearly. Overall, FREAKS is truly an original.

--- Reviewed by Kristi Olson

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