Sue Ann Alderson's Maybe You Had to Be There, By Duncan (Polestar $6.95) is a highly original story, featuring zany characters, an outrageous plot and off the-wall humour. It's the story of 12year-old Duncan on a picaresque journey and mock-epic quest. Other characters are Duncan's inventor-dentist father, his mad-about-chairs mother and his new friend Magnolia (whose parents are card-carrying members of S.A.M: the Society of Amateur Medievalists). Duncan must restore the world order upset by his father's faulty holograph machine, protecting the rare St. Anthony's tooth from bullies and thieves in the process. He stumbles into re-enactments of the Battle of Hastings, runaway buses, war games and a host of parodied types and characters. The narrative is presented in the first person as a confessional documenta novel-writing assignment for Duncan's English teacher. It is Duncan's appealingly thoughtful, personal voice that moves this funny, light satire into a credible and moral dimension as he observes violence in its many guises and discovers there is more than one way to be a modern day knight.
-by Judith Saltman

[BCBW 1991] "Kidlit";