When Mystical Creatures Attack!, Paperback

Descriere

In ``When Mystical Creatures Attack ,`` Ms. Freedman s high school English class writes essays in which mystical creatures resolve the greatest sociopolitical problems of our time. Students include Janice Gibbs, a feral child with excessive eyeliner and an anti-authoritarian complex that would be interesting were it not so ill-informed, and Cody Splunk, an aspiring writer working on a time machine. Following a nervous breakdown, Ms. Freedman corresponds with Janice and Cody from an insane asylum run on the capitalist model of cognitive-behavioral therapy, where inmates practice water aerobics to rebuild their Psychiatric Credit Scores. The lives of Janice, Cody, and Ms. Freedman are revealed through in-class essays, letters, therapeutic journal exercises, an advice column, a reality show television transcript, a diary, and a Methodist women s fundraising cookbook. (Recipes include Dark Night of the Soul Food, Render Unto Caesar Salad, and Valley of the Shadow of Death by Chocolate Cake. ) In Virtue of the Month, the ghost of Ms. Freedman s mother argues that suicide is not a choice. In The Un-Game, Janice s chain-smoking nursing home charge composes a dirty limerick. In The Hall of Old-Testament Miracles, wax figures of Bible characters come to life, hungry for Cody s flesh. Set against a South Texas landscape where cicadas hum and the air smells of taco stands and jasmine flowers, these stories range from laugh-out-loud funny to achingly poignant. This surreal, exuberant collection mines the dark recesses of the soul while illuminating the human heart.