The style of the book is extremely simple, very obviously written for children just beginning to tackle their first chapter books.
Being rejected by one's parents is a powerfully miserable idea for most children and drives home the idea of his life being one of overall rejection nicely. While McMullan doesn't explore the home life (which resembles the backstory attributed to Erik in Wellen's short story of the same year, intriguingly enough, though there appears to be no correlation between the two) very much, the abuse of parents is a much easier way to introduce a child audience to Erik's ostracization since birth, since the idea of whole-society rejection is a little much to swallow before age twelve or so. Interestingly enough, Erik's childhood includes both mother and father in this version, despite the fact that Leroux's Phantom never mentions a father figure of any kind McMullan's Erik asserts that his father "never even saw my face", but there is nevertheless quite a bit of childhood abuse attributed to said father in this early chapter, which raises the questions of why Erik's father accepted his mother's injunction never to remove his mask, and why his loathing of Erik is so strong if he has never seen his face. McMullan adds a backstory here for Erik, which covers much of the same ground that Kay's novel will do in the next year but which takes a few different directions. But: McMullan: she has surpassed my expectations. There isn't a lot of depth, and the kiddies don't really come away with many new ideas besides "Don't be mean to other people," which one hopes they are learning at home anyway. well, it's just not really anything at all.
They tend to look a lot like Spencer's 1997 musical, and while that's not bad.
I normally don't expect a lot out of children's versions of the story.
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