Customer Reviews

Toby Alone

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is not appropriate for children. Some chapters toward the end contain disturbing violence, sadistic cruelty, and torture that make the book unacceptable. That much of this seems to be written to be humorous actually makes it more, not less disturbing. I made the mistake of reading this book to my kids, who are 7 and 11. Although we enjoyed most of the first half of the book, which is beautifully written, the children became increasingly upset as we kept reading and when we reached the last few chapters I decided to stop and did not finish the book with them. I do not think that books for children need to have happy endings or that, within reason, they cannot contain violence but this book crosses the line.

Tiny characters have a rich history in children's lit. Stuart Little, The Borrowers, Despereaux, and The Littles have all been keeping it real for the diminutive for quite some time. Hey, even Alice got shrunk down for a bit. It makes sense that kids are drawn to tiny - it brings the world down to a size they can manage. The entire universe? Hard to grasp. A single oak tree? Now you're talkin'. Toby Alone, originally published in France and translated into 22 languages, is a great example of this type of small-scale world building. It is also a great example of thoughtful, complex storytelling. Be warned - if you pick this book up under the assumption you're about to read a light-hearted adventure about cute little characters, you'd be assuming wrong. Chock full of betrayal, environmental allegory, and social commentary, Toby Alone is a wonderful first half of a two part saga.

Alone indeed. One and a half millimeters tall and on the run, Toby Lolness cannot trust a soul. The reasons for this manhunt are not immediately clear, but are slowly revealed through flashback. Toby's parents have been imprisoned due to his father's refusal to divulge the secret for turning tree sap into fuel. Behind it all is Joe Mitch, a vile opportunist who has parlayed his success running a tree-destroying development company into political power. After Toby eludes his pursuers and finds safe haven with Elisha Lee in the Low Branches, the pair set out to rescue his parents. Things don't go as planned, however, and Toby finds himself defeated, living among strangers, and trying to forget his past. But a visit from an unexpected guest changes everything, renewing Toby's mission to save his mother and father, and setting the stage for part two.

Did I mention the flashbacks? Be prepared for a multitude. While I like how Fombelle begins the story on an exciting note and then goes back to slowly add context, a couple of the flashbacks (particularly toward the end) feel a bit like speedbumps on the path to conclusion.

For an astute group, this would make a good classroom read-aloud. With themes at every turn, there's plenty to discuss. Most of these big ideas can be attributed to Toby's father, who's lifelong dedication to studying the tree brings all kinds of controversial theories to light. Is the tree growing? Is there life elsewhere? Are leaves individual plants, or part of the tree? Joe Mitch's development company also provides the opportunity for a number of environmental comparisons to be drawn.

Toby Alone contains a sense of imagination that will stick with readers, who will marvel at how this tiny, well-realized civilization works. They have food, shelter, roads, and many other recognizable elements of life, but they are created in ways that are entirely unique. Frombelle smartly kept this world close to reality, providing for countless clever adaptations - many of which are given clarity through the intermittent sketched illustrations. Even ordinary tree-related things like bark, leaves, and shade take on whole new meanings when the characters are millimeters tall.

While it can be difficult to fully assess the first half of a larger story, I can judge with certainty whether Toby Alone left me wanting more. It did. And I don't think I'll be alone here.

Life is difficult when you're 13 years old. Life is even tougher when you're 13 and one-and-a-half millimeters tall. And life possibly could not get any worse when you're 13, one-and-a-half millimeters tall, and on the run with a secret that people would kill for --- even if it means killing an innocent child. Toby Lolness, however, takes it all in stride as he plots to save his parents and clear the family name from the misunderstanding that started the whole mess.

Toby and his parents, the brilliant scientist Sim and the lovely Maya, were exiled to the lower branches of the great oak Tree years ago after Sim discovered an amazing fact about the home of their great civilization --- it's alive! With his family looking on, Sim demonstrates to the grand council how the Tree's sap works and how harming it will kill their only home. This alarming news is not met with open arms by one particular member of the council, Joe Mitch, who is making a gold mine with his deep digging operation at the center of the tree and who hopes to harvest the sap for his own benefit. When Sim refuses to share the secret of the power of the sap, Mitch leads the effort to banish Sim, Maya and Toby from the summit of the Tree.

At first Toby is apprehensive about the lower branches. His family is starting from scratch, it is close to the grasslands and the mysterious (if not dangerous) grass people, and Toby is without a friend his own age. Slowly but surely, Toby begins to adapt to his surroundings. He has an uncanny sense of direction among the rugged wilderness and has befriended the beautiful Elisha Lee, a girl his own age with whom he spends much of his time. Over the years Toby grows up healthy and happy, even if he is short.

A letter proclaiming the death of Toby's grandmother propels the family back up north for the first time since they were banished. Even though many years have passed, Mitch hasn't forgotten --- or forgiven --- the Lolness family for refusing to share the secret of the tree's sap. Sim and Maya are captured, but Toby escapes and is indeed alone as he flees his pursuers, attempts to return to Elisha and his home among the lower branches, and figure out a way to free his parents. Numerous dangers wait at each turn as Toby battles both the people of the tree and the elements of nature.

Timothee de Fombelle seamlessly weaves flashbacks among the main action to provide much of the back story to the world Toby and the people of the Tree inhabit. It is easy to spot the environmental allegory in the story, but it does not come off as preachy by any means. Instead, it lets the readers see what happens when a society becomes greedy and turns a blind eye to protecting its home. A fold-out map in the cover and many clever illustrations add an extra element to the book. Although Toby is small, his story is not, and readers will not be disappointed with the swift storytelling and the big hearts of many of its main characters. TOBY ALONE is just the start of a larger story with bigger implications to be revealed in the next book.

--- Reviewed by Benjamin Boche

I read the two books in French two years ago and have been offering them to all the 12-year-olds I know. So far, it's been an immense success. Tobie is a dark tale that can be read on two levels. Literally, you will discover a world encapsuled in a tree where people living in the grasses and the roots are considered inferior to people living in the branches and few people even know anything beyond their microcosm. Tobie is a skinny 13-year-old boy whose world collapses all of a sudden when his scientific father discovers there's another world besides their own (the branches). All microsystems are tightly interrelated and influence each other. This discovery puts Tobie's parents in jail under death penalty and Tobie, guardian of a precious stone entrusted by his dad, becomes the No. 1 public enemy of the biggest developer in the tree. Both books narrate Tobie's tale of survival as he gains further knowledge of the tree and evolves from hunted to hunter. Yes there are scenes of violence (pretty graphic) and I would not recommend this book for anybody under 10 or 11 years of age. Maybe 12 better? As a general rule I've found French books for children to be darker than American books and this one is no exception. However this is precisely what I liked. It is not sugar-coated and tweens' lives are no picnics. Tobie Alone (and its sequel) are a beautiful tale about growing up, love and friendship. Adults would read this book as a parable on urban sprawl and careless development. I did not find the book predictable, which was what kept me reading until the very last page. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Just a cautionary word though: I have not read it in English and I hope it flows as well as in French.

THis book was recommended to me by a librarian for my 8 year old son. It is full of horrible, cruel, disgusting acts of cruelty perpetrated on a variety of characters, including a reference to rape of Toby's mother. As an adult, listening to it with my 8 year olds, I was originally intrigued by the story, the parallels to our current societal situation and the introspective depth of the story. I understand why the author uses the graphic descriptions for acts related to the bad people in the story, however, I wish I would have understood those things were going to be included in advance, I would never have let them listen to or read it at all. I think it is a story that would be relevant and interesting for conversation among adults or young adult children, 14 and older, but not for younger kids.

As a mother who screens everything her 11-year-old daughter reads, I always welcome recommendations from librarians and booksellers, especially if they are pre-published. When we received "Toby Alone" by Timothée De Fombelle, it was not a pre-pub - but still new to our library, and I am really glad our library has it in their catalogue. It is not a "happy" book, and the way it is structured is reminiscent of how tree roots and branches grow, really, tangling back and forth and doubling over - it is disturbing in the way Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" was disturbing when I read it in school, only a little less. Maybe. It is very thought-provoking, and raises very eerie questions about what power really means in the hands of conscience, when the viewpoint is not a popular one. What does our government know that they are keeping from us for "our own good"? Or the good of the environment? The good of "life as we know it"? These are easily very deep questions that would generate heated discussions in the classrooms during Literature class and, while I really can't say I *enjoyed* the book, I find myself thinking about it and the issues it raises long after I've put the book down. I guess it's a book that really *grows* on you! I believe said daughter feels similarly. In her words:

"The book, `Toby Alone' by Timothée De Fombelle is an adventurous, if unsettling, book for tweens.

"Toby is only one millimeter tall at 13 and, lives in a big oak tree with his parents. Already, he has a so-called life of crime, due to his father. You see, Toby's father is a famous scientist. Everyone admires him. That is, until he finds a secret he is not willing to part with, because it will kill the very tree they live in, even though it would help people work less. That's all. As a result, Toby's family is banished to the Lower Branches where he meets Elisha, his only true friend. Then, that life crumbles away when his family is captured. Toby escapes, only to be chased after again by his so-called best friend (from the Higher Branches). What a wonderful life.

"I wouldn't recommend this book to younger tweens or kids because the book was uncomfortable in how the author described things. However, I think that it is perfectly fine for teenagers.

"I would give the book three stars: one for the plot, one for cover and one for the fact that it kept me hooked."

This book is very good. The story is about Toby, who is on the run from pursuers that want to have a magic box. The people in the story are only a few millimeters tall. They all live on the Tree. Most of the chapters end with an action or a detail that makes you want to keep on reading. The chapter titles make you want to read what the chapters are about. It is completely action packed.

I haven't read this book to my daughter yet, but it looks great! The product arrived immediately and in great condition.

Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but I definitely recommended this book to everyone I know - young and old. The world Fombelle invents is marvelous, intriguing, and complete. The characters are lively and quirky, with the kind of hilarious extremes of evil and good that made Roald Dahl so much fun to read. But Fombelle's story goes beyond black and white good guys and bad guys. There is depth to the emotion and to all of the characters - both main and secondary.

This is a two book series - you can't stop with book 1. Oh, and the hardcover version has a beautiful map of the tree where the characters live on the inside of the jacket. This delightful feature is partly what made me buy the book!

Toby Alone is set in and around an enormous oak tree inhabited by a community of tiny and technologically unsophisticated people. The minuscule thirteen year old protagonist, Toby Lolness, is an escaped prisoner with a large and very tempting bounty on his head. While he repeatedly eludes capture, we learn, through a series of well-integrated flashbacks, how Toby came to be a fugitive. Six years ago, Toby's father, a brilliant scientist, conducted a series of investigations and experiments designed to prove that the tree is a single, living organism. One byproduct of his experimentation was the invention of an engine that uses the tree's sap as fuel. Although Sim shared his findings with the public, his fellow citizens failed to understand the importance of conserving their home, and immediately besieged him with plans for money-making labor-saving devices. Because drilling the tree for sap will kill it, Toby's father refused to explain how the engine works, and his brave and principled stand led to his nuclear family's downfall. And that's just the beginning of this fast paced, thought-provoking and entertaining book.

Timothée de Fombelle is an excellent writer who tells a plot driven, compelling story without sacrificing character development and motivation. Toby is a sympathetic, considerate and stalwart youth who is willing to risk everything for those he loves. Other major characters are similarly valiant and admirable, though quirky or flawed, while bit players who appear for only a few pages are blessed with back stories that are interesting, believable and sometimes heartbreaking. The author also shows that some of the amoral characters who make reprehensible choices have a touch of humanity, like the the brutal father who belatedly discovers his love for his son; the horrid thug who is heartbroken at the passing of his sidekick; and the sadistic jailer who adores his cruel daughter.

While the author explores powerful themes that may be disturbing for sensitive or precocious readers, he more than compensates for these dark moments with lengthy passages showing the reader how brave and caring individuals can overcome serious adversity through honesty, loyalty, and thoughtful action. His careful plotting and deft touch keep the book's grimmer themes from becoming overwhelming, while his obvious love of nature is tempered by brief, unsentimental glimpses of its realities.

I greatly enjoyed this book, and eagerly await the publication of its sequel, Toby and the Secrets of the Tree (Toby Alone). This book is a keeper, and I will be buying additional copies for the tweens and teens in my life.