My Father the Werewolf

by Henry Garfield

Book Overview

Teenagers Miranda and Danny move to Maine to be near a deserted island where their werewolf father can isolate himself during full moons, but when the ocean freezes and creates a path to the populated mainland, they resort to desperate measures to save the townspeople from their transformed parent. Ages 12+.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0689851804
• ISBN13: 9780689851803
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Atheneum Books
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.6"
• Age Range: 13 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 8 to 12

Customer Reviews

Horror From Coast To Coast

Ken isn't a bad father per se, he just doesn't have much ambition. When he brings his children to Pismo Beach being bitten by a werewolf is the last thing on his mind. A kindly hunter or hermit explains the situation to him and to his two lonely children, Miranda and Danny. The important thing is keeping them safe from Ken when he turns into a werewolf, which is monthly, and secondarily the heroic trio must eke out a lifestyle in which Ken can take a job and support his family while maintaining the werewolf lifestyle, in Maine. Liverpool, a working class coastal town, calls to them, calls them back like a siren's song. Just as in real life much of Maine's native industries have been displaced by a giant loan and collection agency, the town of Liverpool has been subject to their own vampiric influence, a sinister lending operations called AMIC. Little Miranda has her own obscene name for this acronym. Tensions rise in the village between representatives of the huge conglomerate and the ordinary people who are feeling shoved out and displaced by mass capital. Garfield paints a vicious picture of globalization and proves that leftleaning horror writing can be more than mere liberal propaganda. Where the werewolf story fits in isn't really clear, and little Danny, who suffers through his father's distressing pot use, is sort of a sad sack and not really much of a hero, but in general Garfield has the right idea and knows how to make a wolf seem evil--and corporations too. It's a sad story, sadder than most because (werewolf storyline aside) it rings so true. Children today don't have parents they can't count on, and they are forced to grow up too soon. The ending of the book is bleak, like something by Georges Simenon. In capitalism, the author seems to say, we are all in a sort of prison farm, where the big bosses are pissing on the floor and expecting us to clean it up. Not very cheerful, but Brechtian to a fault.