School For Villains (Tumblewater)

Below Tumblewater is a school unlike any other, daily schedule: dagger-throwing, advanced forgery, lockpicking, and ghostly geographyI looked again at at the door and saw a message scrawled roughly in the mud of the wall above it, as though someone had used their whole hand to gouge it out: RIDLEY GARNET'S SCHOLE FUR VILLAINS. Everyone's favorite orphan-turned-storyteller Daniel Dorey is back and on the run from sinister millionaire Caspian Prye, who kidnapped his sister. He must venture below the rain-drenched streets, where he unwittingly enrolls in a very strange school, encountering a host of weird and wonderful characters. Here kids learn the tricks they need to survive—from safecracking to double dagger-throwing, from disguises to practicing surgery on chunks of corpse. This is one school where naughtiness never goes unrewarded! Will Daniel and his schoolmates be able to put their grisly lessons into practice and rescue his sister?

From School Library Journal

Gr 5–8—Below the dank and dangerous town of Tumblewater is an even more repugnant community of sewers and mud, where the citizens of this small borough have fled from the loathsome Caspian Prye. Daniel Dorey, the young storyteller from the author's Grisly Tales from Tumblewater (Macmillan, 2010), is not only searching for his kidnapped sister, but is also being hunted by the heinous Caspian, his villainous police force, and a robotic assistant. Daniel's only clue, left by the witch who hid his sister away, is a mysterious and ancient key. To his dismay, Daniel is sent by "Uncle", the guardian of the underground, to the School for Villains, where he is to learn the fine arts of knife-fighting, lock-picking, thievery, and surgery (practiced on fresh corpses). The cast of characters that Daniel encounters, both above and below ground, is beyond strange; they include an eccentric recluse who lives in a most unusual tower and who can eavesdrop on anyone in the town, and the young boy ghosts who inhabit abandoned houses. As he tries to discover the significance of the key and how it is connected to his sister's disappearance, Daniel collects several ghastly and grisly tales, which are told to him (and to readers) between chapters. These tales are not for the faint-hearted, and often involve gruesome deaths, murders, and lots of blood. While the various threads and characters all come together a bit too neatly in the end, readers who enjoy being repulsed and frightened will devour this macabre tale.—MaryAnn Karre, West Middle School, Binghamton, NY

About the Author

Bruno Vincent is the coauthor of Do Ants Have Assholes? This is his first book for children.

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