The Swamp Soggon

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Cousins Marlene and Timothy are spending the night with their Aunt Mary
who lives in a house near the forest. Unable to sleep, Timothy looks out
the window and sees a dark shadowy figure lurking in the moonlit garden.
Before he can say anything, the creature grabs Aunt Mary’s cat, Cocoa,
and disappears into the nearby woods. Marlene and Timothy give chase but
soon discover that they are pursuing the Swamp Soggon, an ogrelike
creature. With the help of Maggie, an Irish sorceress, Gertzelda, a
kindly hypochondriac witch, and a host of strange forest dwellers with
such names as “Mr. Dilly” and “Miss Hashazoomie,” Marlene and
Timothy pursue the Swamp Soggon to his dreary lair and keep him from
turning Cocoa the cat into a pan of “Meow Muffins.”

As in the first two volumes of Geddes’s Scarecrows series this tale
takes place in Necum Teuch, a small village on Nova Scotia’s Eastern
Shore. Although the characters have occasional literary lapses
(Maggie’s Irish accent, for example, seems to fade page by page),
there are enough quirky humor and imaginative plot twists to keep young
readers highly entertained. Recommended.