While Auxier loves the old stories, he just as clearly loves a fresh and joyful perspective. The story teaches fidelity to friends, and how a random act of kindness to a dogfish in need might prove the saving grace in one’s battle against dragons. Peter discovers that apparently harsh people might be very loyal and loving, and apparently helpful people might have very selfish motivations. The story teaches the prudence of not judging a person by outward appearance or surface behaviors. The fairy tale tropes and traditions are all here: the wise old counsellor giving a strange gift and stranger advice, a long lost heir moving from rags to riches, the evil power-hungry relative, the enormous monsters that must be conquered.

His snickering imitations do not, however, descend to cynicism or mockery, and indeed the main point of the story is that real innocence triumphs. His derivations from and nods to Peter Pan, Oliver Twist, Gulliver’s Travels, the Just So Stories, and The Odyssey, are unapologetically gleeful. Auxier’s writing is flavored with a zest for words, and a childlike sense of awe for the old stories. Barrie and Charles Dickens, with some collaborative input from Homer, Jonathan Swift, and Rudyard Kipling. This delightful book reads like a fairy tale written by J. And yes, there is a Princess, and there is… but you must read it for yourself to dig up the other treasures.

Of course, that is before he falls in with the mind-reading Haberdasher, the cat-horse-knight errant Sir Tode, and the unkindness of Ravens who keep watch over the prisoners in the vast sandy reaches of the Just Deserts. Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes is the story of a blind orphan boy who, for the sake of survival, becomes the best pickpocket in the city.

Peter nimble