The Globe and Mail is spellbound by Amphibian
Did you know that you share 50 per cent of your DNA with a banana? Consider that the next time you purée one of these hapless fruits into your morning smoothie. This factoid is not fiction, though my expert source for it is.
The moral centre of Carla Gunn's darkly delightful eco-novel is young Phineas Walsh, tireless crusader for the ill-used creatures of our fragile Earth. The world's future teeters on Phin's shoulders. Bearing the weight with subversive verve, he courts the ire of his Grade 4 teacher and rolls his eyes at his mother's nuggets of chipper wisdom. After he has a tough day at school, mom cheerfully opines that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. 'Or weak or crippled,' Phin deadpans. It doesn't help that her bromides alternate with dark forecasts. Schoolyard thugs are a mere preview. 'She says I'll meet lots of small-minded, life-sucking cretins all through my life.'
Watching the Green Channel, Phin learns that humans share their life chemistry with every living thing, yet callously disregard their links to the chain of being. When a program advises that 25 per cent of all mammal species are endangered, he's spurred to a resolution: He will save at least one species from going extinct.
Enter Cuddles, an Australian tree frog brought into Phin's classroom as a teaching accessory. Phin sees only an imprisoned creature of the open forest, forced to live in a glass case with a fake tree branch. He laments the fact to his mother, who notes that frogs are intellectually inferior to humans and probably don't much care where they are.
Phin's response: 'If aliens came down to Earth and were one million times smarter than humans, would it be all right to capture all the humans with nets and put them in solitary cages and feed them once in a while and watch them bang their heads against the glass until they died?' How does one approach this sort of uncompromising logic from a nine-year-old? Phin's mom trucks him off to a psychologist.
The doctor tries to teach Phin how to stop worrying and start living, but for Phin, dedicated concern is life's purpose. He hasn't yet learned the morale-boosting trick of celebrating the good things. When his classmates are each asked to do a drawing of the greatest gift humans can give the Earth, Phin's picture shows Earth dancing on a grave marked 'R.I.P. Humans.'
When the human plague gets him down, Phin explores his imaginary planet, Reull, where the Gorach beings endure their own brands of peril, including the colourfully decapitating medical condition, 'upside-down explosiosis.'
Carla Gunn has fashioned (more likely been possessed by) an irresistible voice. I confess this kid grabbed me from the top and held me in tender thrall. Phin is equally discerning and innocent, enraged and brimming with love. The fierce ethical battles with his mom, usually ending in mutual apoplexy, are downright scary sometimes. His behaviour would drive any parent to distraction, yet his stance is generally unassailable.
His cynical view of humankind is balanced by a pure and purposeful heart. If he sees a plastic bag blowing down the street, he retrieves it, 'because it could blow out to the ocean and a sea turtle or an albatross could choke on it.'
Cuddles becomes Phin's corrective project. He and classmate Bird cook up an elaborate plan to spring the frog from his glass prison and ship him to an Australian frog welfare society they discovered online. The plan goes somewhat awry. That will take you a bit more than halfway into the book. The rest, moving through shadows to light, really must be discovered. Carla Gunn's sense of the absurd — drawn always from the grim facts — is the sort that trumps despair with healing mirth. You may find your inner frog.
