Joe is the younger brother of Maggie and son of Josie, a single mother. He doesn’t know who his father is.
Life isn’t easy for them as a family, but they are close . He goes to the local comprehensive school and his best subject is maths, but is good at English as well.
He is not afraid to take charge in situations, is sociable and hardworking.
All he needs is the opportunity to do well.
He experiences what most teenagers face, spending time on his own in his bedroom, playing computer games. Isn’t academic, likes football, struggles with learning. When he switches with Joe he is thrown into a close family unit, who rely on each other, and finds a lifetime friend in Joe.
Minx is a female goblin. She lives in a tree house, near the park in Melby. Prior to this she lived in the Keep, but grew tired of the other Goblins because they stopped performing magic and tricks and wanted to become nice (Godlins).
Minx has strong magical powers, is fairly solitary, likes living in her tree house, which can’t be seen by humans. She doesn’t like her peace being disturbed. If she gets angry anything can happen.
She has a sense of humour, keeps her word, but if she dislikes you, because you may be arrogant, obnoxious, or worse, she will play tricks on you and create mischief.
The other Goblins don’t like her, especially Sneaky, who wants to get her in trouble with the Goblin council, for breaking the Goblin rules, if he can catch her out.
Minx has a strong sense of style, in clothing, likes books and creating mischief.
There is much more to Minx then you may realise, but this will be revealed bit by bit
A boggart is a mischevious or malevolent creature, historically associated with a specific location, such as a house, marsh or bog, and known for causing trouble.
In One Summer in your shoes we meet the boggart in Scotland, by a moorland bog, which Charles as Joe, gets sucked into. He is lucky to survive. Boggarts are blamed for many disappearances of humans, particularly children. They are creepy and you wouldn’t want to meet one. They exist in English folklore.
The boglin, on the other hand, is a creation by the author. The name is a play on the words goblin and bog. My boglin is called Brack, as he lives among the bracken on the moors.
Brack was banished to the moors, an isolated place, because he broke the goblin rules.
He saves Joe (Charles) from drowning in the bog, and also senses that the boys have goblin magic inside them, which is one reason to save them.
A fact not revealed in One Summer in Your Shoes. Minx captured two soul shifters, and kept them imprisoned. They only have limited powers, to swap souls for a month, they then revert the souls and leave. For Minx to capture them was quite a feat. This was how she was able to swap Charles and Joe over. It could only happen once, and when the month was ended, they were free, and left Melby, because they didn’t want to get caught again. Minx didn’t tell the boys this.
There are six goblins in the book One Summer In Your Shoes. In one of the next books in the series some of them are disillusioned with being a Goblin and want to change, to become good, hence the name Godlin, not Goblin.
A female Goblin. She has the power to move people or objects by creating a wind, or whirlwind.
Also a female goblin. Mayhem has the power to create chaotic scenes, things becoming crazy and out of control. Known for creating mayhem in supermarkets by swapping signs, food in the wrong places, swapping street signs, creating a fake UFO, and similar.
As a sister of Mayhem’s, she can only affect things that Mayhem has created, so if she creates mayhem, she adds to it. They are known as The Terrible Duo in Goblin circles, a title they have enjoyed very much.
He never tells the truth and causes situations where humans told lies, or made-up stories to cover their tracks. He likes to make people look stupid, performing jokes on them, or tricks.
He also avoids the truth about himself, and cannot be trusted.
He got bored because he felt he had run out of tricks that worked, he needed a new challenge, but lacked inspiration.
As a Goblin he tried to spread fake stories, and they were believed, which meant they weren’t funny or mischievous, as the people were serious about them. As a Godlin when he told the truth they didn’t believe him. He felt he couldn’t win either way.
Devious is underhand, mean, grumpy, and snarls. He likes to make people do mean things.
He got fed up because he felt, more and more, that humans were doing mean things on their own, without his input. Or they were being very nice, and couldn’t be influenced to do mean things, there was no middle ground.
Devious is mean to Minx, and wants to give her trouble. He becomes even more sullen and selfish, like a diva. He gives up being mean to humans, so although not strictly a Godlin, he loses his edge.
No one knows whether Sneaky is male or female. They always creep around, scaring people, moving objects or making scary noises. The problem was people were not getting scared anymore, just saying ‘Whatever’, or not listening because they had earphones, and not seeing because they were on phones all the time.
As a Godlin they had more success because they would play their favourite music, do
something humans liked, and got more attention that way.
At heart, though, they still liked to give Minx grief.
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