A 10-year-old struggles to stop his brother from going "feral" in this sensitive, humorous portrayal of a family in crisis.
Things are falling apart at Angus's house. He's organizationally challenged, his parents are having money troubles, and his older brother, Liam, is sneaking out to drink and run wild around Los Angeles. "He used to be funny and normal, but now he snaps and goes bonkers and makes everybody sad or mad," Angus says. "It's scary." But Liam's behavior also inspires Angus's fifth grade "legacy" project: he writes and directs a play called Werewolf Hamlet, in which Hamlet turns into a werewolf when he becomes enraged. Angus hopes his brother will make the connection between Hamlet's unchecked behavior and his own.
Using that same wishfully creative mind to cope with stress, Angus holds imagined conversations with old-time Hollywood stars like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, during which everything in his life goes perfectly. But life is not ideal, and even the Shakespearean insults Angus flings at his brother aren't enough to control or cure him, as he learns when his parents start attending meetings for families dealing with substance-abuse issues.
Kerry Madden-Lunsford (Ernestine's Milky Way) empathically approaches a family dealing with multiple crises through a lens that may help readers feel less alone in their own struggles. Although some of the characters lack depth, Werewolf Hamlet is thoughtful and clever, well worth a place on the shelf. Bonus: Angus makes Shakespeare sound thrilling and hilarious. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor