I am going to begin with some text quotes which might give you an idea about this story which some critics describe as a macabre fairy tale.
"Seeing a teddy move or talk might scare a person. That might make a teddy less likely to be chosen. And being chosen was all the teddies wanted."
"To a teddy, this was the meaning of free; being selected off the shelf, taken home and embraced by a child."
"Forever Sleep would make all scares float away. Teddy rumour had it that Forever Sleep felt like a child's hug that never ended."
"He peeked down at his body. It was strange to see himself outside his dark box. But all his parts were where they should be. He pudgy teddy limbs. His round tummy. His blue teddy fur. A tag was sewed to the seam at his side. MY NAME IS BUDDY, it read. Seeing his name printed like that made Buddy feel stronger."
"Buddy's clean feet passed across all sorts of revolting rubbish. Soiled, wadded napkins. Pastic bags inhaling and exhaling with the breeze. Fast-food wrappers wounded with ketchup. Cotton swabs yellowed with earwax. Baggies of dog poop. Apple cores, banana pees, bread crusts. And water bottles by the billions."
"The fifty gulls had turned into one hundred. ... They were so close, Buddy could make out ghastly details. Wings curling like cutlasses. Black beaks and talons extending like needles. Merciless eyes sparkling like stolen gems."
"They were still thaumaturgic Furrington Teddies with Real Silk Hearts and So-So-Soft fur. But it was also true they were lost in a harsh world. What it is took days for children to find them? Or weeks? How long could teddies last on their own?"
"Buddy widened his gaze. Scattered amid gutted packaging were the remains of dozens of Furrintgon Teddies. They'd been torn to pieces."
If you explore these review comments you can read more about the plot of They Threw us Away.
Reflective children will revel in this thought-provoking world. Kirkus Star review
Publisher blurb: Welcome to The Teddies Saga, a gripping new middle grade trilogy from New York Times-bestselling author Daniel Kraus and illustrator Rovina Cai. Buddy wakes up in the middle of a garbage dump, filled with a certain awareness: he’s a teddy bear; he spent time at a Store waiting for his future to begin; and he is meant for the loving arms of a child. Now he knows one more thing: Something has gone terribly wrong. Soon he finds other discarded teddies—Horace, Sugar, Sunny, and Reginald. Though they aren’t sure how their luck soured, they all agree that they need to get back to the Store if they’re ever to fulfill their destinies. So, they embark on a perilous trek across the dump and into the outer world. With ravenous rats, screeching gulls, and a menacing world in front of them, the teddies will need to overcome insurmountable challenges to find their way home.
I do need to give a warning - nothing is resolved at the end of this book. I am heading off to find book two and book three because I desperately need to know about the fate of Buddy and his friends and I even more desperately need that all important 'Happy Ending'!!
I am so glad I read this book as an ebook because then I could highlight all the moving, poignant, and even disturbing passages. And I could make note of delicious words such as cockamamie, squirmy-wormy, and colour names such as chartreuse, verdigris, azure, amaranth, sinopia, feldgrau and amaranth.
This book is disturbing yet somehow also compulsive reading. Take a look at the trailer from the publisher. It is NOT a book for a young child which might be implied by the image of a teddy bear on the cover but it is a book that readers 11+ will find engrossing even though it is quite a violent and sinister story. You might think of Toy Story; Lord of the Flies; and Coraline. They Threw us away made me think of Ollie's Odyssey. I also thought about The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate diCamillo which I found oddly disturbing. The theme of identity and self discovery are also explored in Boot and The Last Human.
Here are the next two books in the series:
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