Gwendy's Button Box

by Stephen King & Richard Chizmar
170 pgs  (Gwendy series #1)

In Gwendy’s Button Box Stephen King accompanies friend and coauthor Richard Chizmar to Castle Rock. The small town in Maine which served as the locale for many of his earlier books. But don’t let the fact that there’s a second author’s name on the cover dissuade you from reading it. It has Uncle Stevie’s prints all over it.

As the story begins, Gwendy Peterson is a 12-year-old girl who is starting to feel self-conscious about her weight. She has decided that this summer she’s going to lose some of that extra weight and return to school in September looking better and ready to shed the “Goodyear” nickname some of her peers use when referring to her. So, each day Gwendy races to the top of the stairs at the park known as the Suicide Stairs.

One day, when she reaches the top, she’s met by a man wearing on old-fashioned hat. The man speaks to her as if he’s known her all his life and proceeds to give her a strange wooden box with different colored buttons and levers on it. The man tells her the box will give her gifts, but that the gifts are compensation for the responsibility she will bear in keeping it.

Each time Gwendy pushes one lever, the box dispenses a small chocolate animal. It’s delicious and satisfies her appetite to the point that Gwendy no longer overeats. When she pushes the other lever, the box dispenses an 1891 Morgan silver dollar, in mint condition. They’re worth hundreds of dollars apiece and will allow her to attend the Ivy League college she dreams about. But the buttons each have destructive powers, and Gwendy soon learns just how important it is to guard the box and make sure it never gets into the hands of someone who would use those buttons with evil intent.

The story is short, but is a prime example of what has made King so well liked. It’s a great story and I think it’s King providing an analogy to how he feels about what he has spent his lifetime doing. Pushing buttons and pulling levers on a small box his entire career has given him everything he has ever wanted, or needed in life, but it hasn’t come without a sense of importance and responsibility.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆