GREGORY, MAW, AND THE MEAN ONE

Norbert Meaney earns his moniker by throwing horses through windows and terrorizing children—because, he boasts, he has no heart. To save their lives and town, young Gregory and Maw (a fiery-tempered crow who has raised the lad) propose taking The Mean One back in time to find his missing organ. The humor here is in contrasting Gregory—likable, gentle, enjoying a close relationship with his feathered parent—and the rank, bellowing, hairy giant. But that's not enough to carry a story of this length, and Meaney never seems all that nasty anyway; in the end, heart recovered (he lost it at 13 to a pretty classmate), he charges off to bathe and right all the wrongs he's committed. An aimless and loose-jointed yarn, but mildly funny. (Fiction. 11-13)