The author of the book featured in Face-Lift 1250 would like your thoughts on the version below:


Oliver Bradshaw is an eleven-year-old boy living in a small town in Rhode Island, hoping that this new place will be his permanent home, where he can finally feel safe and a sense of belonging. But when he accidentally opens a portal to the monsters’ world in his new apartment, Oliver must gather up who he can to help him, [To help him . . . close the portal? Or what?] even if it’s only his new quick-to-scare best friend, the meanest bully in his new school who hates him with a passion, and a friendly monster that looks like a wad of chewing gum. Oliver must enter the monsters’ world to stop the mysterious leader of an evil faction of monsters [How does he know that he must do this?] in order to not only save his own home but the fate of the town and possibly the entire human race.

Oliver and the Underlings is a 50,000-word work of middle grade fantasy. I am the author of a number of short stories in markets such as Spider, Stories for Children, knowonder! magazine, and Kids'Magination, and this is my first novel.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.


Notes

I don't think this is an improvement. The sentences are too long and they aren't telling the story. S1 tells us who the main character is. S2 sets up the situation and lists three other characters. S3 is pretty vague. What does the mysterious leader want? How is the entire human race threatened? How can this team of misfits save us all?  It seems to me the father and grandfather would be more important in the query than Oliver's three allies, but I haven't read the book.

I reiterate my suggestion that you go with something like this:

When monsters cross into our world and kidnap all of Oliver Bradshaw's classmates, he decides to recruit a hostage rescue team. Unfortunately, he can find only three allies: his quick-to-scare best friend, a devil-may-care bully, and a friendly monster that looks like a wad of chewing gum.

Getting to the monsters' home world is the easy part: there's a portal in Oliver's closet. But now that they're here, how are they supposed to tell the friendly monsters from the evil ones? And . . . wait, what's Oliver's grandfather doing here? Turns out he's searching for Oliver's father, who went missing years ago.

Gramps has his own team of monsters and is mounting an attack on the leader of a faction of evil monsters who kidnapped Oliver's dad. Could they also have Oliver's classmates? Only one way to find out, and if our heroes fail, the monster war will spill into our world. And nowhere will ever be safe again.


That probably isn't your story, as you don't even mention Oliver's father and grandfather in this version, but at least this might be a template for a good query. This version at least uses the pronoun "they" to show Oliver isn't completely alone, while your version lists the allies and then drops them.

Does each ally have a special talent vital to the mission? Oliver's original mission is to rescue his classmates. But you drop that in favor of stopping the mysterious leader of an evil faction of monsters, to save the human race. The original mission seems noble enough, and far more doable for characters who have no special powers.