Lost Lagoon

Krystyna Higgins is the former book review editor for the Toronto-based
Catholic New Times.

Amy and her grandmother love the lagoon in Vancouver’s Stanley Park.
One day they notice to their dismay that the artificial lake’s fish
and vegetation are dying. The worried pair convince officials at city
hall to investigate the problem. Both the cause and the solution, it
turns out, are the work of the elves who live at the bottom of the
lagoon.

While the author’s choice of an ecological theme is certainly timely,
this book has some glaring deficiencies. The carelessly edited text
bristles with inconsistent capitalization and errors in grammar and
sentence structure. Furthermore, Angus falls into the trap of telling
rather than showing the reader. Her plodding prose is pleasing neither
to the ear (too many long complex sentences) nor to the eye (large
unbroken blocks of text on the page).

The illustrations, a full page facing each page of text, are
eye-catching with their glowing primary colors. They often seem
unnecessarily cluttered, however, and there is no clear visual
distinction between the underwater and surface scenes. In two instances,
the picture does not correspond with the chunk of text it is intended to
illustrate.

The narrative is structured as a story-within-a-story: a too-long
preamble recounting the (factual) history of Stanley Park and its
lagoon; the realistic story about Amy and her Nana; and the
“magical” tale of the elf Yawney. The juxtaposition of fact and
fantasy here seems forced and artificial; this is a story that has lost
its way!

Angus’s stated target is a “read to me” audience of 3- to
9-year-olds. Her prose is too wordy for the younger end of this age
spectrum, her story too simplistic for older listeners/readers. Not
recommended.