This is quite the adventure, I thought to myself as I was one chapter into reading Socks & Secret Quests: The Wandering Shop. That further got me thinking of how few books I read that can truly be called “an adventure”. There are a majority of books that are entertaining, and some that are great, but “an adventure”, that all-but reads itself is quite rare. Socks & Secret Quests: The Wandering Shop so perfectly nails the it factor that some books lack.
There are some illustrations throughout the book, but not enough of them to trick young readers into thinking this is a graphic novel. The illustrations are tailor-made for an anime or manga. These are the kinds of illustrations that assure young readers that the book is still fun, despite Socks & Secret Quests being 97% words.
Elementary-age students, welcome to the era of reading for fun! Your guide for the next 30 chapters is Socks & Secret Quests: The Wandering Shop. Be advised, this is is mglit (middle-grade literature that skews above and below its intended target. Students in fourth or fifth grade will be able to read it. This explains the very basic and somewhat over-the-top welcome announcement that started this paragraph. However, you middle and high schoolers, as well as those 18 and up will enjoy the book.
Older readers might quickly notice “Quests” in the title, as well as, the teens on the cover dressed in Middle-Earth garb with weapons of that sort. They might stay away from Socks & Secret Quests because it has magical, renaissance elements and they’ve sworn off books of this sort. I get it. When too many books in a certain genre enter the field they find their niche or go to the time-out corner. Rest easy, come back to the well and drink a little bit. I call them ‘middle Earth’ books, others will call them fantasy, possibly. However, ‘fantasy’ implies an older, more mature book that could have love, or a quest for magic love. ‘Middle Earth’ books something else to us. They have magic, wizards, quests and a sense of adventure that attempt to hook in mglit readers. The best of these books can easily demo down to upper-elementary school, but can demo up to high school readers and beyond.
Socks & Secret Quests: The Wandering Shop is a book that nails that final category to the floor. It is relentlessly enjoyable. It’s plot is direct and not too complicated, yet manages to surprise readers every chance it gets. Readers know that the quest will be resolved and they think they know how it’ll get there, but they’re wrong.
Peri is a young girl who did exceptionally well in some ‘magic games’ that the region held. Everyone in the area expected her magical calling to present itself, but it hasn’t, so she’s interning at a local magic shop. This shop magically appears, and moves from place to place, so people on their quest can get swords, wands and other things.
Stop. Do not roll your eyes at the plot so far. It seems like an all-too-typical story for a book of this sort. However, something magical (pardon the pun) happens in the second chapter. In our mind’s eye, it was like the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones fights the Nazis in that Nepalese bar. The plot to Socks & Secret Quests shifts. It becomes an unexpected adventure with familiar elements, but with a carefree, yet accountable, sense of action that it’s impossible to ignore.
Accountable action, the characters get hurt and are unable to do something, like fight in the final battle. Again, your mind is going to where you think the plot is headed, but it takes a different route. Socks & Secret Quests: The Wandering Shop is refreshing in the same manner that the first Guardians of the Galaxy film. Until that film’s release, superhero movies were tired, repetitive and people saw them more out of obligation or habit, than an expectation to see a refreshing, adventure movie. Granted, superhero movies evolved after that, for better or worse, but try to remember the mindset of 2014 movies for a moment. They needed a kick in the pants. Socks & Secret Quests play striker, in the best of all possible ways to mglit in the first book in its series.
This is an example of, the sum is more that its parts. The individual ingredients add up to a romp of a book that runs with energy. It ends in a way that readers will probably expect, with the quartet defeating the big bad and baiting the hook for a sequel. However, readers won’t mind if it ends that way because it sets up more stories with that crew. There’s a whole island/continent for them to explore and the map where it takes place in only one fragment of the greater land mass.
Socks & Secret Quests: The Wandering Shop is by Triona Murphy with illustrations by James Firnhaber and available on Antheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing.
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