Clown in a Cornfield is a fun small town ride that takes on the weirdness of growing up through the angsty and pubescent teenager years – trying to follow your own path and ambition, but the powers at be want it their way.
This young adult novel follows Quinn Maybrook as she and her father relocate to Kettle Springs, Missouri. Right from the get go, the title fulfills its genre’s promise, by exploring Quinn’s navigation through high school, her encounters with cliques and the popular kids, and the collective banding against the evil science teacher, Mr. Vern.
With the adults suspicious and with gratuitous malice towards the children of Kettle Springs can you blame the kids for exercising daily revolts? The cycle is endless…until one night Frendo, the town’s clown mascot, takes havoc into his own hands one crossbow shot, ax swing, and fireball launch at a time.
It’s a quick read, even at 330+ pages, but the narrative flows easily with a simple event after event. A fast reader can get this done in a week if not sooner.
Quinn is quickly engaged in her own gaggle of mischievous kids, bent on using the town’s run-down buildings and abandoned plots of land for their own use…but Frendo is always watching and they don’t approve.
The internal monologue and overthinking was a bit much, but I recognize that that too is a trait of the young adult genre. The action really picks up around the 200 page mark, and from there is 130+ pages of fiery roller-coaster mayhem with fun deaths, psycho chases through corn, a few fun call backs to a new generation handling older technology, and more.
In the end, it’s a summer slasher founded in teenage angst, romantic curiosity, and rallying against a killing spree to keep a town in the past.
Once you’ve had a read, you can follow it up with the movie.
Have you read Clown in a Cornfield, seen the movie, or both? Comment below.
You can reserve the book in the BCCLS system here. Audiobook also available on eLibraryNJ/Libby and Hoopla. Hoopla also has the sequel Frendo Lives.
You can reserve the movie in the BCCLS system here.
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Written by:
Sean Willey
Information and Digital Services Assistant
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