The Shrinking of Grin by J. Edwin Skinner – The Strawberry Post

A book review of a fun children’s middle grade raed about a boy who ends up suddenly shrinking to a very small size and finds himself being chased by wasps and other creatures in a strange new world, how will he ever get back home?

About The Shrinking of Grin

Title: The Shrinking of Grin
Author: J. Edwin Skinner
Publisher: C. A. A. B Publishing
Genre: Older children’s/middle grade fiction, Fantasy
Book format reviewed: Paperback
Sweet Strawberries: 

Description:  While Grin’s scientist father is disturbed by the unexplained disappearance of his research institute director, Magnus G. Musselman, Grin is more interested in emulating his father and sets his mind to conducting a series of crazy experiments: on flies. He cannot imagine the trouble this will land him in. Literally cut down to size when he is faced down by a big fat bluebottle, he finds himself prey to a gigantic wasp and is only saved at the last minute by a huge frog that takes pity on him when he lands on a lily pad in the garden pond. Guiding Grin down through the depths of this pond, the frog takes him to a fabulously weird world called Quilibria with the promise of a quick fix for his situation.
Yet the fix is not as quick as he would hope in this strange new dimension, where nothing is quite what it seems. But it is the only place where Grin can hope to find the solution to his sadly shrunken state and get back to his normal size. As he travels through Quilibria in search of the solution, he is met with one obstacle after another thrown in his way by a succession of weird creatures.
Will he find what he’s looking for? If he does, will he be able to take it with him or will he stay this size forever? And what does Magnus G. Musselman’s disappearance have to do with any of this?

*Free copy provided by publisher for review…

My review and thoughts on The Shrinking of Grin

Oh, what a fantastic fantasy adventure! Peregrine, or Grin for short, wants to study animals like his scientist father, so begins studying flies that he keeps locked in jars in his room, experimenting on them. One day, when he spots a fly sitting on his window sill, he plans to catch it and add it to his collection, but before he gets the chance to, he suddenly finds himself shrinking in size as everything around him gets bigger, and he soon finds himself being chased by a giant wasp.

I really enjoyed this story from the start when Grin and his sister, Cilly, find a creepy creature on their dad’s tablet which he is studying at his work. When the siblings visit their dad at work it sparks something in Grin which makes him want to study insects, especially flies. But Grin’s experimenting soon takes a dark turn when he finds himself shrinking to a tiny size and suddenly chased by a giant wasp. Grin soon finds help though when he ends up falling into a garden pond and meeting a frog there who soon takes him below the water, to a strange world called Quilibria. I like what happens when Grin enters this new world, how strange and weird it is. Creatures of all kinds exist there and are equal sized if not bigger than Grin and I like how strange this new world is, and the adventure Grin soon finds himself taking.

There’s a lot of creativity with the adventure Grin takes and the strange creatures he encounters along the way, not all of them creatures we know. I love how nothing is as it seems in Quilibria and how some of the characters Grin meets are very odd, like the queen or the two men at an inn. Grin begins the adventure with the frog called Ferdy, but he soon finds himself meeting with a strange pair of law enforcement officers, ants, and even talking and moving trees. The story really has an Alice in Wonderland feel to it with how strange everything is and I love how Grin soon learns more about a certain character as well as the long adventure he goes on with all that happens to him while there.

The story does build up to a good ending and I did enjoy the final chapters which wrap things up well for all characters involved but also leaves an opening for more adventures in future for Grin. I really do wish there were more books following Grin as some aspects of this story and what was happening feel a little unfinished like what’s happening with the red ants, but this book also has a good standalone ending which is satisfying too.

Overall I’ve really enjoyed this adventure and how Grin grows through the journey. It’s a brilliant and fun read with a lot of weird and wacky things happening to Grin and it’s also a fun adventure which will make you see the world of insects and other creatures in a new light. A great and different fantasy adventure.
Zooloos

Buy The Shrinking of Grin

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About the Author J. Edwin Skinner

A native of Exeter, J. Edwin Skinner studied at Newcastle, London and Bristol. He worked briefly as a teacher of English in Germany and a translator in the UK, before moving with his young family to work for a multinational company in Switzerland, where he eventually set up his own translation business. Under the pen name A.B. Decker, he has also published Flowers from the Black Sea (2024), The Dark Frontier (2021) and is working on another book set mostly in Austria around the time of World War 2.

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-Thanks to Zooloo’s Book Tours for a chance to be a part of this blog tour! 🙂

Other similar children’s fiction

-Read review – Game On!: Shrinkle by Emily Snape

What do you think of this book?  Would you ever want to shrink down to a tiny size?  Let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂