When I first started reading this, I did not like it. I almost passed it off as a loss entirely. The thing that turned me off was the language. It reminded me of the words that the BFG used, and the story in general interested me from the summary, so I pressed on. The BFG used strange words because he never went to school, and the children in the story are very young, some younger than school age, I suppose. And I noticed that the language seemed to become more standard as the story progressed.
Hokey Pokey is a land of children, where imagination makes things true and there are no adults. (Well, one.) We start off with Jack, who gets his precious bike stolen by Jubilee, a girl. (The bikes are semi-sentient like horses, and Jack had earned Scramjet on the open plains.) After that, things start to change. Every child that comes to Hokey Pokey gets a tattoo on their stomach, and Jack’s is now fading. He also hears a train in the distance, but there are no trains in Hokey Pokey, only tracks. Jack appears to be going crazy with the loss of his bike. He has lost the spirit of childhood. He tries to gain it back, and almost succeeds for a bit, but it ultimately doesn’t work.
There is something a bit dark underlying the entire story. Where do the kids come from? Where are the adults? And The Story, that one is dark.
Jack has been a leader for so long, and now it’s time for him to grow up. He’s been the big brother figure for Kiki, teaching him how to play baseball, and now it’s time for him to leave home. And his leaving starts thoughts in the others that they don’t necessarily want to have. His growing up sparks something in Jubilee as well. He passes real knowledge on to the younger kids, like Albert and Kiki and even Harold. Things come together fairly neatly, and the ending is not really a surprise. I do wonder how old Jack is supposed to be, though. When does childhood end?
