A Nose for Adventure

Nose #2

by Richard Scrimger

In this hilarious sequel to The Nose from Jupiter , Alan is to take his first airplane ride. He is off to New York, where his father will meet him for some “quality time” together. There are one or two snags, though. First, his father isn’t at the airport. Then there’s his cranky seatmate, Frieda, who is almost kidnapped while she’s waiting for her wheelchair at the baggage claim. Sally, an abandoned mutt, joins the scene. And finally, Norbert is back. He is an alien from Jupiter who had previously taken up residence in Alan’s nose when he was on a fact-finding mission to Earth. Alan had been, to say the least, an unwilling host to Norbert, but when you’re lost in New York City being chased by bad guys, you need all the help you can get!

Genres: Childrens

176 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2000

About the author

I was born with very little hair and very little feet and hands. They all grew together and I still have them, together with all my organs except tonsils. I do not have four children -- they have me and we all know it. I write and teach and talk about writing and other things. Actually, I talk a lot. I’m right handed, my car has a dent in the passenger side door, and my blood type is A-. The motto of South Carolina is Dum spiro spero.— success comes by breathing. I like black licorice and rice pudding and ratatouille and coffee. Lots of coffee. My hair usually needs cutting. How much more do you need to know about anybody?

I have been writing since 1996. No, that's not true. I wrote for years before that, but no one cared. Since 1996 I've published fifteen books for adults and children. You can read more about them somewhere else on this site. A few of the books did very well. Some came close. A couple didn't do well at all. My most recent offering is Ink Me, a tragicomedy about a tattoo gone wrong, told in supercool phonetic speak by our learning-disabled hero. Zomboy – an undead story – is due out next year. (My editor and I are arguing about certain scenes right now.) And I am writing a semi-graphic novel about kids who fall into a comic book.
Do you want more details? Really? Okay, then.

In 1996 I published my first novel, Crosstown (Toronto: The Riverbank Press), which was short-listed for the City of Toronto Book Award.
Humorous short pieces about my life as an at-home dad with four small children used to appear regularly in the Globe & Mail and Chatelaine, and can still be found fairly regularly on the back page of Today's Parent. I reworked some of this material into a full-length chunk of not-quite-non-fiction, which was published by HarperCollins as Still Life With Children.

I started writing children's fiction in 1998. Two middle-school novels, The Nose From Jupiter and The Way To Schenectady did well enough to require sequels. There are four Norbert books so far, and two Peelers.

My work has received a lot of attention in Canada and The United States. The Nose From Jupiter is a Canadian bestseller. It won a Mr Christie Book Award, was on most of the top ten lists and has been translated into a Scottish dozen languages (that’s less than 12). Bun Bun’s Birthday, From Charlie’s Point of View, Mystical Rose, and Into the Ravine made a variety of short lists and books of the year – Quill and Quire, Canadian Library Association, Globe and Mail, Chicago Public Library, Time Out NY (kids), blah blah. Ink Me is part of the “7” series – linked novels featuring seven grandsons with quests from their common grandfather. Pretty cool, eh? As my most recent book, it is my current favorite. But watch out for Zomboy next year. It’s a killer!

Reviews

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Nose from Jupiter, a Canadian boy named Alan Dingwall faced loneliness, alienation, bullying and intramural sports with the help of a tiny, wisecracking alien named Norbert who, for a while, parked his spaceship in Alan's nose. A year later, Alan is a nervous flyer coming in for a landing at LaGuardia Airport, worrying that his dad (who now lives in New York) will forget to meet him at the airport. Well, he's right about that, but what's even worse is that someone immediately tries to kidnap the snotty, wheelchair-bound girl who sat next to him on the flight, and before he knows it, the two of them plus a stray dog are on a perilous adventure across Manhattan. And that makes four of them, because (as I may have forgotten to mention), Norbert is back.

It's an adventure involving scary goons, stolen goods, a charlatan, gullible rich people, public transit, a friendly street kid who seems happy all by himself, and a couple of unhappy kids – one rich, one not so much – who desperately want to feel their parents' love. And also, the always hilarious voice of Norbert, which now seems to be coming out of the nose of a dog named Sally. You can never predict what he'll say next, except that it will be funny on some level. And there are a lot of levels to this beautifully, intelligently written book.

Alan, at times, seems to be an extremely smart kid. His internal musings are vivid, colorful, keenly insightful, and emotionally compelling – not to mention loaded with historical and literary references that you'd be surprised to find occupying the mind of a 15-year-old kid from a small city in Canada who (apparently) doesn't know anything about Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. At other times, he's amazingly obtuse and unobservant, failing (for instance) to remember what a car looked like that was involved in his own kidnapping. Sometimes it's as if the author's intellect runs away with his average-kid narrator. But it's an inconsistency that you're willing to live with because it enables you to enjoy this as, again, a beautifully and intelligently written book that both touches your heart and tickles your funny bone.

This is the second book of the "Nose" trilogy, which continues with Noses Are Red. Scrimger is also the author or co-author of something like 18 other books, including The Way to Schenectady, Of Mice and Nutrcackers, Me & Death, Zomboy, Downside Up and At the Speed of Gus, as well as a companion book to this series, titled The Boy from Earth, in which Alan travels to Jupiter. The more Alan and Norbert, the better.

[J.B. Mathias · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is just as strange as the first one and also not in a fun or witty way. It's almost like Cormac Mccarthy for kids the prose is almost identical and almost as dark. It's very matter of fact...Listen to this excerpt "I'm waving my arms. Frieda and Sally wait nearby. Sally has her head in Friedas lap." It's almost robotic and because of the somewhat stilted prose a lot of the attempts at humour and wit fall flat.

It has all the same alien related problems as the first one and the use of egpytian gods furthers my stance that the norbert thing is a metaphor for demon possession and aliens are just used as a placeholder to make it less dark and more palatable.

The adventure seemed contrived and nobody really behaved believably. The theme of absent and uncaring parents seems to be a real theme throughout Scrimgers books it's been a feature of all three books of his I have read. While not completely terrible this will be the last of his books I read, this guy shouldn't be writing for children.

[Eliene · Rating 5 out of 5]

childhood favourite!