The Nest

Kenneth Oppel’s The Nest is a fantasy novel for readers aged nine to twelve about a boy named Steve who struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety. Steve struggles to cope when his new baby sibling experiences congenital health problems that lead his parents to worry about whether or not he will survive. Things change, however, when an ethereal spirit visits Steve, offering a solution that Steve can't refuse. Oppel blends the line between fantasy and reality with long dream sequences about an angelic wasp queen visitor, the health of Steve's younger brother, and his family unit as a whole.

Steve is an anxious kid. He worries about germs, washes his hands excessively, has to sleep cocooned in blankets and obsessively reads lists of all that he is grateful for in the evening to help him fall asleep. His anxieties have always been a significant part of his life, but the summer in which the book is set, those worries come to a head. Steve and his younger sister, Nicole, have a new baby brother. The baby was born with congenital defects that are worrying his parents, enough that Steve struggles to get attention because his parents are so focused on the numerous medical needs of the new baby. Steve is terrified that the health of the baby will tear apart his family and deeply concerned that if the baby dies, he won't recover.

Desperate for a solution to his woes, Steve begins to have strange, anxious dreams about wasps and wasp nests. The dreams of nests are surreal and partially rooted in reality – they take a particularly weird turn, however, when Steve begins to receive dream visits from a wasp queen, with a long mane of hair and black eyes, who offers a solution to his family's woes. The wasp queen entices Steve, reassuring him that she and the other wasp fairies are there to help him. They only arrive, she assures him, when there is grief; they come to put things right.



The wasp queen offers Steve a solution. She can exchange his desperately ill baby brother for a new baby, a happy, healthy, and joyful baby. Not only that, but Steve would never have to tell his parents; the babies would be identical. They would never know the difference. Steve, desperate for a solution, agrees. However, he soon begins to wonder what that yes meant and how permanent it is – he wonders if he might want to take that yes back.

For the remainder of the novel, Steve struggles with the repercussions of his decision and the knowledge that he is the only one who knows about the exchange of his baby brother for another kind of creature altogether. The wasp queen and Steve's new exchanged sibling rapidly become more nefarious than Steve ever imagined, and he soon realizes that in his desperate attempt to achieve a normal life with his family, he has caused even more damage by inviting these evil spirits into their lives.

The Nest is about seeking normalcy and learning what it means to live a normal life through the eyes of a boy who struggles with his abnormal brain and habits, and the trauma of a difficult family situation. Steve's younger sister, Nicole, appears as a character of reason and comfort, helping Steve accept himself as he is and providing solace through this challenging time. Much of the book consists of long dream sequences; the magic of those dream segments causes the reader to wonder what is real and what is not. The book is both unnerving in its content and heartwarming in the way that it gives this protagonist, who struggles deeply with the challenges rooted in his own brain chemistry, and his sick baby brother and grieving family a place to shine.



Jon Klassen illustrates sections of the novel in black and white graphite drawings, bringing the book to life.

Kenneth Oppel is a Canadian children's writer who grew up in many corners of the English-speaking world: Newfoundland, Victoria, B.C., Halifax, Nova Scotia, Ireland, and England. Oppel writes primarily children's and young adult fiction, including the acclaimed Silverwing series. He wrote his first book, Colin's Fantastic Video Adventure, in 1985. Oppel wrote The Nest in 2015. He has won the 2004 Governor's General Award, a Printz Honor for his book Airborn, and has been acclaimed by The New York Times for his children's novels. He lives in Toronto with his wife and three children.