ISBN: 9780192739452
Winnie is bored and feels her life is empty – she wants more than just GETTING cheese or TASTING cheese or HEARING about cheese at the Cheese Guild celebration on Trubshaw Baby Day, celebrated in remembrance of Baby Trubshaw who was allegedly captured and killed by the Boxtrolls.
In town, no-one is out on the streets after dark, and triple-lock their doors and shutter the windows, because the creatures who had allegedly taken the Trubshaw baby come out at night looking for fresh victims. But Winnie has some unanswered questions about these “monsters” – for one, there hasn’t been another incident since the disappearance of the Trubshaw Baby that time…
The subterranean trolls are named Boxtrolls for the discarded cardboard containers they wear. They dwell in the dark and musty caverns under the cobblestone streets of Cheesebridge, where they transform the “treasures” they find on the streets during the nights into incredible inventions. Human legend has it the creatures are carnivorous monsters, but, in reality, they’re just misunderstood oddballs, and they have secretly raised an orphan human boy named Eggs.
Pest exterminator Archibald Snatcher strikes a deal with the city’s leader (Lord Portley-Rind) to exterminate every Boxtroll in exchange for membership in the city’s cheese-loving council (called the White Hats), despite the fact that he is severely allergic to cheese. While he secretly engages the captured Boxtrolls to build him a machine.
When Eggs discovers his true identity, he finds himself in the very center of the ongoing struggle between his Boxtroll family and the Cheese-loving, fear-mongering humans. In the end, it takes Winnie to teach both Eggs and the Victorian-era town what it means to be human.
An entertaining read about friendship.
The animated film was based on the novel Here Be Monsters! by Alan Snow, and Laika Studios entreated American children’s author Elizabeth Cody Kimmel to novelize their film.
You can watch the official trailer of the movie here:
Learn to speak Boxtroll
