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It is these very passages that give the book its authentic tone and make it all the more suspenseful and exciting.

That Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes succeeds in this endeavor is a testament not only to its author but to a publishing world that's willing to put out something that doesn't slot into the usual five categories of books for youth." One of the ways in which Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes lives up to this high praise form Bird is to not shy away from are a handful of grim details and suspenseful moments that are occasionally gruesome. As Betsy Bird said of the book in her review at fuse#8, "It is incredibly difficult to write a book for the youth of today that is interesting to them and yet manages to feel 'timeless' without covering itself in must and dust.

While Valente is clearly influenced by Lewis Carroll, Auxier’s book reflects a love of the authors mentioned above with a splash of Treasure Island thrown in to the mix.

Both Valente and Auxier meet these challenges admirably, excitingly and in their own different ways. As I said about Cathrynne M Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, it is very hard to write a book that echoes the classics and sounds authentic, while at the same time creating a story that is filled with original characters, settings and plot twists. Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes reads like a classic while at the same time standing out on the shelves as a book that feels new and uncommon. Roald Dahl, Charles Dickens and JM Barrie came to mind when I first glimpsed the title and cover art for this book on Chad W Beckerman’s blog several months ago and, upon reading I found that these impressions were not wrong. You don’t have to read far into Jonathan Auxier's debut novel Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes(for which he also provided the excellent chapter illustrations) to know that this is an author who has a happy and healthy relationship with classic children’s literature.