[.ca] The Silver Door (ISBN 1551926857)

Amazon.ca:
For Alice, it was a rabbit in a waistcoat that got things going. For Olivier, the hero of The Silver Door, the delightful sequel to Terry Griggs's popular children's fantasy novel Cat's Eye Corner, it's a tiny Chinese "ink" monkey. The monkey literally springs out of a mysterious old book that Olivier has borrowed from his eccentric "step-step-stepgramma" and kidnaps his best friend (who happens to be a fountain pen with the moniker of Murray Sheaffer). Accompanied by a boy ghost who refuses to believe he's dead and a mystical wind-girl (not to mention a puff of smoke from Mount Vesuvius), Olivier pursues the thieving primate into a terrifying underworld ruled by the child-hating Emperor of Ice Cream. Griggs, whose first children's book was shortlisted for both the Mr. Christie's Book Award and the Red Cedar Award, cleverly plays upon familiar fantasy motifs such as the secret passageway into another world and the magic talisman (in this case, a jeweled TV remote). The Silver Door is rich in allusions to The Wizard of Oz, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Phantom Tollbooth, the Narnia books, and even the poetry of Wallace Stevens. Admittedly a bit slow at the beginning, it quickly picks up speed as Olivier and his companions descend into the Empire of Ice Cream where children are stored in deep freeze and their parents brainwashed with a steady diet of butterscotch ripple and kaleidoscope cow. Marvelously inventive, The Silver Door is also sprinkled with lots of delicious wordplay--as befits a book about a talking pen! --Lisa Alward