What to Read in Disney World
1) <em>Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom</em>, by Cory Doctorow
Tor Trade
amazon.com
$11.94
Set in a post-scarcity future where hunger, poverty, and even death have been eradicated, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a spiky black comedy about Jules, a Disney World middle manager in the thick of a turf war. Now that the park has been liberated from shareholders, “ad hoc” governments run its different districts, competing to outdo one another. Jules spends his days fine-tuning The Haunted Mansion until another group stages a hostile takeover at the Hall of Presidents, replacing its audioanimatronics with technology designed to brainwash guests into believing that they are, in fact, American presidents. When the group identifies The Haunted Mansion as its next target, Jules mounts a guerrilla mission to save his beloved ride, making for a thrilling read about the relationship between morality and mortality.
2) <em>The Last Resort</em>, by Sarah Stodola
amazon.com
$25.19
Quick—picture your perfect vacation. Does it involve staying at a resort and sipping a Mai Tai on the beach? We’re not out to yuck anyone’s yum, but beachgoers everywhere need to read this gripping investigation into the dark side of paradise. In The Last Resort, Stodola probes the origins of beach culture, revealing that our understanding of the beach as paradise is actually a modern concept; it wasn’t until the eighteenth century that the seaside wellness craze changed our views about the ocean, once seen as a fearsome foe. Today, beach travel has become de rigueur, but it carries heavy costs, as it strangles local economies, threatens natural resources, and widens social inequality. After reading The Last Resort, you’ll never look at an all-inclusive vacation quite the same.
3) <em>Swamplandia!</em>, by Karen Russell
Vintage
amazon.com
$7.99
Who says that amusement parks should be safe, sanitized, and child-friendly? In this big-hearted, phantasmagoric novel, thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree journeys through the haunted, otherworldly landscape of the Everglades on a quest to save Swamplandia, her family’s embattled gator-wrestling theme park. Featuring singular settings and the most beguiling narrator you’ll ever meet, this exuberant novel is at once a remarkable work of magical realism and a paean to the power of American mythmaking.
4) <em>The Queens of Animation</em>, by Nathalia Holt
Little, Brown and Company
amazon.com
$9.60
Despite its stock and trade in princesses, the Walt Disney Company hasn’t always been kind to women. In The Queens of Animation, a historian profiles five women who fought the entrenched boys club at Disney Studios to leave their mark on some of history’s most beloved films. But here’s the kicker: much of their visionary work went uncredited, meaning that Holt’s book is as much an act of detective work as it is a work of scholarship. From Grace Huntington, who broke aviation records in between her work on Snow White and Bambi, to Sylvia Holland and Ethel Kulsar, whose treatments for The Little Mermaid took fifty years to see the light of day, each visionary featured in these pages is worthy of her own standalone biography.
When you head to the Happiest Place on Earth, bring a deep dive into Disney’s animation history, or a black comedy set in Liberty Square.