Book Review - Nancy Springer's Enola Holmes and the Boy in Buttons
Enola Holmes and the Boy in Buttons by Nancy Springer
Published by: Wednesday Books
Publication Date: June 22nd, 2021
Format: Kindle, 21 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
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Joddy is the boy in buttons. The jolly little urchin dressed up at the office door. There to greet Enola and run whatever small errands she needs tending to. He's sweet and overly differential. He's a constant in Enola's changing life as she no longer has to go to work in disguise. She's taking classes and expanding her mind with education. In other words, her brothers are now on her side and not trying to hunt her down. But Enola does have a hunt on the horizon. Joddy takes ill and Enola sends him home. But his family is so desperate for money that they can't afford for Joddy to miss a day of work, so they send his younger brother Paddy in his place. The uniform is ridiculously big on him, but Enola is game. If this little one wants to work her door, more power to him. But the next day he doesn't show up and Enola is worried. She decides to go looking for Paddy. She never realized how far Joddy walked every single day for a steady paycheck. This makes Enola's heart ache and her need to find Paddy even more desperate. But when she finds just the buttons, torn off from his uniform she is very concerned. If anything happens to him this is her fault. Paddy will be found if it's the last thing she does.
This short story is a wonderful dip back into the world of Enola Holmes before the first new book in over a decade came out. It reintroduces us to favorite characters and shows us what Enola has been getting up to. But what I really loved is that this story connected back to that which really turned me into a Victorian nut, Michael Crichton's The Great Train Robbery. That book made me wild for anything Victorian. I admit now that it's not the best of Crichton's books. In fact the movie, also done by Crichton, is far better. But I loved all the weird little Victorian details I learned about, in particular the importance of a snakesman. As Urban Dictionary puts it, mentioning Clean Willy from the book I might add as the exemplifier, a snakesman is a "person of the criminal sort adept at finding his or her way into or out of a building. Usually someone of small stature able to fit through tight places." So wouldn't a small child be the best snakesman out there? Stands to reason.... So long as that child plays ball and is willing to be a criminal.... And that's why this short story was so great, it went in an entirely different direction than I thought it would but was still wonderfully Victorian to me.
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