Character Clues

Character Analysis

Physical Appearance

The three main characters are on the cusp of adolescence, and like pretty much everyone else their age, whatever they're wearing reflects the way they straddle the line between childhood and adulthood.

For instance, one day after school, Poppy's "hair was in coppery pigtails, and her eyeliner looked smudged on one eye, like maybe she'd forgotten it was there and rubbed over it" (3.28). She's wearing eyeliner like the young adult she's on the brink of becoming, but smudging it like the kid she still is.

Another instance like this? When Zach sneaks out in the middle of the night to meet Alice and Poppy, "he pulled a sweater over his T-shirt and crept downstairs in his alligator pajama bottoms" (5.19). So he's simultaneously sneaking out, which is a pretty teenage thing to do, and wearing alligator jammies, which is a bit more childlike.

Heck, at one point during their quest, Alice even throws a sweatshirt with cat ears on the hood over the other clothes she's wearing (8.20). In other words, every one of these kids has one foot in childhood and another in adulthood, and their appearances are often here to remind us.

Family Life

Each of the main characters is dealing with serious challenges at home. Zach often clashes with his father, who recently returned after abandoning the family, and his anger toward his dad drives a lot of his behavior in the book.

For her part, Alice "chafed under the thumb of her overprotective grandmother" (1.5) because her parents died when she was little. And Poppy seems to have the most unstable home life of them all:

Her parents seemed to have given up on the house around the same time they gave up on trying to enforce any rules about dinners and bedtimes and fighting—around Poppy's eighth birthday, when one of her brothers threw her cake with its still-lit birthday candles at her older sister. (1.32)

Yikes. More importantly than any of their individual problems, though, is the fact that their lacking home lives leave the kids really needing each other. With no on else on their side in the world, these three come together in a way that's far deeper than just getting together to play a little game.

Props

The gang's favorite toys tell us a lot about who they are as people. For the lowdown on this, though, you're going to have to click on over to the "Symbols" section. Don't worry—we'll meet you there with our magnifying glass, ready to sleuth the role that props play in this book.