What We’re Reading

Freaks: Alive on the Inside | Annette Curtis Klause

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Abel Dandy grew up in Faeryland, surrounded by the most unusual people, right down to is legless father and armless mother. To him, oddities were the norm, and it was he, with his own human unoriginality he saw as the lack. While he was a decent knife-thrower, he felt unspecial, surrounded by the inhabitants of the Faeryland show. When the departure of the Siamese twins, and the souring of his dealings with Phoebe the dogfaced girl, Abel grows restless and angry. At night, his dreams are filled with images of an Egyptian beauty, and he knows he’ll never find someone like that inside the life he leads.

After a couple of run-ins with local town boys, Abel steals away in the middle of the night, planning to find fortune, and return with money and his own name. Instead, he joins the Marvel Bros. Circus, only to be thrown out when they discover the escaped monkey to be his friend Apollo, Phoebe’s brother, who followed him from home. Thinking himself lost, and his friend doomed, he stumbles upon a farmhouse near the tracks, only to meet up with Apollo yet again.

After receiving a job within the house, Abel begins his plan of earning enough money to send Apollo back home, and to take off again on his own in search of a show. But then, much to his surprise, a show comes to him.

While at first excited about the possibility of getting a knife throwing act, it doesn’t take Abel long to realize that Dr. Mink is up to no good. Through luck, he learns that Mink planned to sneak away in the night, taking Apollo with him, and manages to weasel himself into the deal as a driver.

Upon meeting up with the rest of Mink’s crew, and finding the children locked in their wagon, Abel knows what he has to do. But how can he get away, and save them all too? And what of the mysterious woman still entering his dreams? What does it all mean?

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