At its best, a new book, “The Wicked Small People of Whiskey Bridge,” is a two-for-one creation. It is billed, and accurately so, as “children’s fiction.” But — and this is the unusual part — it also boasts quirks and crannies of wry humor and insight aimed directly at adults who choose to read it to a child.

This two-for-one approach is never easy. Fiction aimed at different age groups operates under fairly rigid rules that govern reader ability and interest. Interfacing them is a fragile endeavor. Readers, both children and adult, are lucky that the two University of Farmington professors who wrote this book have succeeded so well.

The sulfurous fumes that smogged communities along great rivers like the Androscoggin in the days when paper mills thrived and environmental controls languished provide the motive force for Jon Oplinger’s and Elizabeth Cooke’s unusual story.

At the same time, theirs is a book about how people — even people only 11 inches tall, with sulfurous skin and bright-green hair — interact with one another and the varied world around them.

“Whiskey Bridge” reflects the knowledge and commitment of its authors. Oplinger teaches anthropology and sociology at Farmington, and is the author of two nonfiction works, “The Politics of Demonology” and “Quang Tri Cadence.” Cooke, a professor of composition and creative writing at the school, has chosen to write fiction, including the novels “Complicity” and “Zeena,” as well as a children’s book, “Tong Ting Finds a Family.”

“The Wicked Small People of Whiskey Bridge” begins when the little people of the title are forced to leave the volcano that has long sustained them because its sulfurous fumes on which they depend are disappearing. They enlist the help of a large eagle and a flight of amiable geese that transport them to the Maine mill town of Whiskey Bridge. The town is home to the Quaddyhatchie Paper Mill and also to a family porch, beneath which sulfur-laden air is in generous supply.

The new arrivals don’t understand much about their unfamiliar environment, but they know the mill’s emissions sustain them, and set about making the strange place a home.

Central to this effort is the major building material of the little people’s world — cardboard. Their affinity for cardboard is considerable, and it’s an affinity that adult readers easily can understand. Here’s how the authors describe it:

“What cardboard was to the Little People of Whiskey Bridge, duct tape was to the Big People of Whiskey Bridge. Duct tape fixed everything: car grills, radiator hoses, fishing rods, drafty storm windows, worn-out baseball gloves and bicycle seats. It was used everywhere in the mill and when the Quaddyhatchie Nuclear Plant broke down they just wrapped it up in a gigantic roll of duct tape and started it up again. Nothing, except perhaps food, is more profoundly missed when needed than duct tape.”

One after another, readers are introduceed to similarities between the worlds of big and little people. Two children and their welcoming dog become friends of the new arrivals and help safeguard them, especially when winter breaks over the Maine landscape. Cooperation becomes key, too, when a much-heralded computer program called “SCRUBCRUD” is brought to the mill to cleanse emissions and the little people once again face the loss of sulfur they need to breathe.

This time it will be the big people of Whiskey Bridge who will decide their fate. And it will be up to readers — young and old — to carry away the wisdom that Oplinger and Cooke have chosen to share with them about change, and especially change for the better.

If you’d like some fresh, engaging, green-haired little people in your life, this is the place to look. 

Nancy Grape writes book reviews for The Maine Sunday Telegram.

 

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