The Wizard's Dog, by Eric Kahn Gale

I feel that although there have been some fantasy dogs in the past few years, cats and squirrels have been the clear front-runner animal protagonists.  So even though I myself am a cat person, it was a nice change to sit down with a good magical dog! 

Nosewise, the titular hero of The Wizard's Dog, by Eric Kahn Gale (Crown Books for Young Readers, middle grade, January 2017), is a very magical dog indeed, although he doesn't at first recognize his own gifts.  His master, Merlin, and Merlin's apprentice, Morgana, have kept him shut out of the study where they do their own magics, but Nosewise is determined to be just as good at tricks as Morgana.  He has no clue what their words mean, but he is sure he can learn to do the amazing magical things Morgana can.  And when Morgana hangs a magical stone around his neck, Nosewise finds that he can talk and understand human speech.  Now there's no holding him back!

And this is a good thing, because when Merlin and Morgana are kidnapped by the fae, who have taken power of a good bit of the mortal world, it's up to Nosewise to find them, and rescue them from the dark magic that has surrounded them.  Along the way, Nosewise befriends a good hearted boy named Arthur, and together they follow the trail to the place where the sword in the stone is waiting...

The story is told from Nosewise's doggish point of view, which makes it a fun twist on the Arthur legend.  Nosewise's own magic is likewise of a  doggish bent, with the nose being crucial, as one would expect.  And the conclusion, in which Nosewise shows just what a Good Dog he is, is a lovely twist on the legend!

Give this one to lovers of dogs and medieval magic stories--they will love it.

disclairmer: review copy received from the publisher

Spindle, by E.K. Johnston

It was generations ago that a demon was defeated by the Storyteller Queen (as told in A Thousand Nights).  The demons were supposed to be safely locked away....but over the years, one has carefully chipped away at the magic keeping them from regaining any power.  And now this demon is ready to seize control of two kingdoms....and her first move is to curse a princess. Spindle, by E.K. Johnston (Disney-Hyperion, Dec. 2016), is the story of that curse, and how five kids fought against it.  If you love fairy-tale retellings, this is a Sleeping Beauty you should not miss!

Yashaa and his three best friends (two other boys and a girl) live in makeshift camp in the hills forming the boarder between two countries.  On the other side is a country that would like to swallow its neighbor.   On the other side is the homeland, a place blighted by when a curse was placed on the Little Rose, once the cherished princess, now a princess who is doomed and blamed for her people's suffering.  On her fifth birthday, she received gifts from friendly spirit beings, but then things went horrible wrong when she was chosen by a demon to serve as a vessel once she grew up.  All that one last spirit could do was to give Rose a way out--if she were to spin, she would fall into a magical sleep.

Yashaa's homeland was once a place where spinning wool brought prosperity, but now no one can spin there without falling ill.   And the princess cannot spin (because falling asleep will leave the demon's curse in place), nor can she do anything else creative, because that is the food the demon craves from her.  Yashaa is tired of his hopeless life as a refugee, watching his mother dying from after-effects of the curse, so he musters his friends to go back to their homeland, to try to do something, anything, about the curse.  The first step is to find the Little Rose, and get information.

The princess is surprised to find Yashaa climbing into the tower room where she's kept a virtual prisoner (an effort to keep her from making or doing anything creative).  But she seizes the chance to be part of her own salvation, and compels him to free her.  Though Yashaa learns to care for her, despite his initially hostile assumptions, she makes a dangerous travelling companion, and not just because of the demon's curse.  The nasty prince of the neighboring kingdom intends to marry her, and spurred on by demonic encouragement, he's determined to hunt her down.   Yashaa is equally determined to save her, and she is even more determined to try to find some way to save herself.

On the surface it might sound like a magical adventure-quest book, but it isn't, quite.  It is about people more than it is about adventures, and the struggles faced are mostly internal--persevering, wanting to make things, and never giving up hope, being the agent of your own salvation.  While I was reading it I thought I was finding it a bit too slow, and wished for more magical occurrences (I loved the gardening gnomes!), but when I finished I realized it had gone by quickly after all, and was vivid in my mind.  I like it more now in retrospect than I did during the reading, and I find I still care for all the characters, and find my heart still a little sore from this particular bittersweet take on the concept of "happy ending."

Like the first book in this world,  A Thousand Nights, this is a story where belief and strength of  will and the making of path that you want events to take is what defeats the demons in the end. 

(aside--if anyone is keep tabs of fantasy books where menstruation happens, as one would expect in a story about girls, here's one for you!)

(second aside--this is one for my diverse fantasy read.  It's a Near Eastern type world, with brown skinned characters).

The Singing Bones, by Shaun Tan

In The Singing Bones (Arthur A. Levine Books, October 11, 2016) Shaun Tan offers three dimensional art to evoke the spirit of various of Grimm's fairy tales.  Snippets of the tales are presented along side images of small sculptures.  The seventy-five sculptural arrangements are weird, evocative, and eldritch embodiments of the stories; each one calls for contemplation and a pause to enjoy it before turning to the next.  The peculiar is highlighted, the mood is captured, the mythic is embodied.

If you don't know the stories already, you will maybe find the book frustrating, because the stories aren't told in their entirety.  If you know the stories already, you might, like me, want very much to reread them with the new images in mind.  Here's a sample page (Little Red Cap), which shows how a small bit of text is pared with an image.  The page size is big enough so that the details of the images can be beautifully appreciated.

This is a book that would make a perfect gift for a fan of fairy tales, if, again like me, you are thinking ahead to Christmas!  It's a very good present book to give to someone you want to give a book too but aren't sure what, the sort of book that would be a nice addition to any coffee table.  It would make an especially nice gift if paired with modeling clay, because the small sculptures Tan has created are more than a bit inspiring....

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Rat Prince, by Bridget Hodder

The Rat Prince, by Bridget Hodder (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August 2016) , is a Cinderella imagining in which the rat who gets transformed into a coachman is the central character.  Prince Char is indeed a prince among rats, and he and his rat subjects are not your garden variety rodents. They are pretty much human in mentality (though with rattish concern for Food), and their fortunes have been tied to the human house of Lancastyr for generations. Prince Char watches as the  last of the Lancastyrs, known as Cinderella by her cruel stepmother, suffers, and the stepmother, quick to turn to poison when it suits her, is no friend of the rats either.  Rat and girl become friends (he can understand human speech)...and Prince Char comes up with a plan that might save them both from the intolerable situation.  If Cinderella goes to the ball, and marries the prince, she can kick the stepmother out, saving the rats and ensuring that the Lancastyr bloodline will continue (without the family, the rats are just rats....).

And though the stepmother does her best to keep Cinderella from the ball, magic come into the story when the patron goddess of Cinderella's family comes to lend a hand.  Prince Char is now a handsome, princly human, Cinderella goes to the ball....and though the whole business of her marrying the prince is rather more complicated than in the familiar story (this version adds a nice level of complication to the situation)...Cinderella gets her happy ending.

The chapters alternate between Prince Char and Cinderella, so that both get a chance to become real characters to the reader.  Char is ratty enough when still a rat to be believable (sort of), and although his transformation to human form is unbelievably unproblematic with little residual rat, this is perhaps for the best given that he and Cinderella are in love.....

If you like fairy tale retellings and sweet romances suitable for younger kids to read (and if you can cope with the fact that one of the players is an ex-rat, which is really rather odd), you'll enjoy this one!   There's enough family history unfolded gradually to add some depth to the plot, and the situation with the human prince adds danger.  Plus there's the emotional weight of Cinderella's situation with her (absolutely justified) concern for her father keeping her trapped in a horrible situation.  In short, it's a fun, fast read that makes for a satisfying whole.   A good one for 9-11 year olds, not quite substantial enough for anyone much older unless they enjoy reading light fairy tale romance.

Mighty Jack, by Ben Hatke--review and favorite fairy tale blog tour

The moment Mighty Jack, Ben Hatke's newest graphic novel for kids (First Second Sept 2016), arrived in our home, it was being read. Mighty Jack is a reimagining of the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, but this is only the first episode, and my boys and I all agreed that we had only one problem with it--it ended, and we wanted more of the story Right Now!

Jack's mom is working two jobs so that they can keep their house, which means Jack (reluctantly) has to spend his summer looking after his little sister Maddy, who seems to be on the autism spectrum. The magical part of the story starts with the two kids wandering through a flea market.  A strange man offers them a box of strange seeds in exchange for the keys to their mom's car (a nice modern substitution for the cow!), and when Maddy, who doesn't talk, tells Jack to buy the seeds, he hands the keys over.  And Maddy and Jack plant them, and they begin to grow....

And they are magic, and very very dangerous plants result- mud-slinging root vegetable critters, a giant snail, and more!   Fortunately a new friend, Lily, comes to join in the fight; a homeschooled girl with excellent sword skills.  But when Maddy's seriously injured (in the fight against the giant snail), Jack decides the garden has got to go, and sets it alight, and it burns just fine.  But then Jack finds that both Lily and his sister still have seeds, and things get even worse, setting up more adventures to come (because after all the story of Jack and the Beanstalk doesn't all take place in the garden at home.....).

It is a fast, fast read, that goes down like an ice cold coke on a hot day.  Lots of fizzy bubbles of picture and story, combining to make something truly magical.  The magic (which includes a visiting dragon!) and the engaging illustrations aren't all Mighty Jack offers.  It's a warm, heart-tugging story of a family struggling to get through, with the bonds of friendship and family holding things together.  The expressive illustrations convey tons of feeling, and I look forward to paying more attention to them on my next re-readings of the book (I'm a graphic novel gulper, which means I have to go back several times to take the time to actually look at the pictures in detail.....)

Fans of Ben Hatke's previous books will be tremendously tickled to see familiar characters making cameo appearances (look for the girl from Little Robot shopping for parts and tools in the flea market, for instance).  And readers new to Hatke's stories will almost certainly want to seek out his other books. 

Fans of fairy tale retellings will also be tickled by this one, and to celebrate the release of Mighty Jack, First Second has organized a blog tour of fairy tale favorites.

I'm a big fan of fairy tale retellings (I have a list of the one's I've reviewed here).  My own personal favorite fairy tale retelling is Robin McKinley's Beauty, which has everything a romantic young reader could want--lots of books, a castle, beautiful dresses, a lovely garden, and a romance that grows from a solid foundation of friendship.   But for those who loved Might Jack, I'd recommend Ursula Vernon's fairy tale based stories about Harriet, a hamster princess who takes no prisoners. 

These aren't graphic novels, but they are graphic heavy, and so appeal to the text reluctant reader in much the same way as a graphic novel does, and they are funny and cute as all get out! The first book, Harriet the Invincible, is a Sleeping Beauty reimagining, and in the second, Of Mice and Magic, Harriet tackles the mystery of the twelve dancing princesses.  I recommend them almost as enthusiastically as I recommend Ben Hatke's books (which is saying a lot).

Be sure to check out the other stops on the tour:

     Miss Print, 9/26

Teen Lit Rocks, 9/27

Kid Lit Frenzy, 9/29

Librarians’ Quest, 9/30

YA Bibliophile, 10/3

Ex Libris Kate, 10/4

The Book Rat, 10/5

Love Is Not a Triangle, 10/6

The Reading Nook, 10/7

and thanks, First Second, for the review copy of Mighty Jack!

Roses, by Rose Mannering

Roses, by Rose Mannering (Sky Pony Press), went on my to-be-read list when it first came out in 2013, and I read the Kirkus review--"A lyrical, remarkably unusual retelling breeds new life into the “Beauty and the Beast” tale." But other books happened, and I would periodically look at it in my Amazon cart and sigh, and continue to want to read it.  So I was very happy when I was offered a review copy to coincide with the new paperback edition and sat down with high hopes.

We meet Beauty as an orphan, taken in by a wealthy woman who doesn't actually want her (the backstory to this is revealed as the story progresses) and she's unloved, unwanted, and freakishly strange--her skin is silvery and her hair is white, making her name, which is thrown at her for lack of anything better, seem at first ironic.  In a country building up to paranoid hatred for magic and magical persons, being not entirely human looking is a huge strike against her.

When the magic-haters take over her home city, Beauty is taken up into the hills by the family's horseman (the one person who truly cares for her) and still not yet adult, starts a new life with him there in the village he came from.  But the villagers in the hills also think she is strange, and her protector's own biological daughter who he left behind as a baby is (naturally) jealous as heck that her father loves the odd orphan girl more than her. Then the violence that drove Beauty from her first home catches up to her in the hills, and the Beast story enters the picture, and so to save her foster father after he took a rose from the magical castle in the forest, she goes to live with the beast.

Fans of Robin McKinley's Beauty will enjoy the next part, because Roses is essentially the same, down to the world of the garden reflecting the weakening of the spell, the magical  library, the horse that is Beauty's best friend.  I loved this part, and wish it had started before page 179.  There are some diffence, enough to make it interesting, but it felt very familiar in general.

The problem with beginning a book when the main character is a baby is that it is tedious to watch her grow up. I feel I had gotten the point of Beauty's unhappy childhood in the big house in the city long before that part of the story was over, and I felt like I was slogging a bit. Bits of interest about the world and its magic/non-magic tensions hinted at a larger story to come, but it had never fully materialized even by the end of the book.  Getting up in the hill country, where Beauty starts taming wild horses, was good, and getting to the castle was better.  But I kept feeling that the author repeatedly was making points that I'd already grasped, or hinting at, but not fully grappling with, the larger story, which made me feel somewhat frustrated

The larger social issues of violence against magical beings swings into the story's ending, rather abruptly and with no particular emotional resonance because of feeling rushed.  There's definitly lots of room for more story to happen, as Beauty learns who her parents are and becomes more aware of her own powers of magic and figures out how to use them.

Roses did have something that's rather rare in fantasy--religion is a cherished part of the lives of several main characters, praying brings comfort, and the village priest up in the mountains is wise and compassionate, though we don't hear much about the dogma of the religion.  Religion as part o daily life, that brings comfort (as opposed to angry gods and cults of savage priests) is something so seldom mentioned in YA fantasy that it was a refreshing change.

Final thought--didn't quite work for me mostly for reasons of personal preference but also because of a feeling that the larger Magic vs the World plot and Absent Magical Parents plot was unevenly woven into the story.  And also because the Castle part felt rather too familiar.

That being said, give this one to a horse loving young teen who likes fairy tales, and I bet they will enjoy it lots!

The second book in this trilogy, Feathers, has just been released--though it seems more companion than sequel, I'm invested enough in this world and it's problems that it's now on my reading list, and hopefully will be read in a more timely fashion than was the case with Roses!

The Seventh Wish, by Kate Messner

The Seventh Wish, by Kate Messner (Bloomsbury, June 2016), spins off of the fairytale of the fisherman and the wish-granting fish a middle-grade contemporary story dealing with the hard issue of drug addiction.

Charlie misses her big sister Abby, in her first year at college, but she's happy to fill her time with her friends and her relatively new passion for Irish dancing.  Ice-fishing brings in a bit of extra cash to help her buy just the right shinny dress for her Irish dance competitions...and it brings magic into her life when she catches a fish that grants wishes. 

As is so often the case with hasty wishes, they don't go quite right--her friend Drew didn't actually want to make it onto the basketball team, and her mother's new, and much-wanted/needed job means that sometimes what Charlie wants has to go out the window.  And there's the fish's mix-up between Roberto Sullivan, the boy Charlie wants to have a crush on her, and Bobby O'Sullivan, the boy that now is infatuated with her.  But these problems pale into comparison when more serious trouble enters her family--smart, athletic, beautiful Abby has become a heroin addict, and there's no way to wish that away forever.

But Charlie's family is strong enough to hold together, and Charlie is strong enough to realize that she can't make everything all better with wishes, or promises from Abby never to use drugs again.  So even when the seventh wish is gone, and the magic fades away, though there's no guarantee that everything will be all better, there is hope.

The topic of drug addiction is a serious one, that is taken seriously in the story,  It's disturbing how easy Abby's path to heroin was--starting with the familiar, readily available Adderall and moving on down the line.  It's clear how easily substance abuse can take over someone's life, even if that person has a loving family and lots going for them.  And it's clear that Abby's never going to be truly out of the woods, and that what seemed like it should be an easy path through life for her is now gone. 

But this darkness isn't presented in any graphic or overpowering way that is inappropriate for middle grade readers (9-12 year olds). The Seventh Wish still manages to be a warm, friendly, and funny story.  Charlie grieves, is angry, is resentful, is in denial--all the things that one would expect from a middle school kid.  But she's a strong enough person with a strong enough family to still be aware of the good and the funny and the beautiful things in life, and Kate Messenr shares such things generously.  Charlie learns, with some help from the Serentity prayer, that there are some things she can change for the better without magic, and that she can still love her sister. (And poor magic-ed Bobby O'Sullivan gets a nice ending too once the magic wears off....)

The drug addiction in The Seventh Wish triggered some backlash (you can read about it at Kate Messner's blog).  But gee, kids don't live in bubble wrap, and why the heck not encourage them to read an educating, eye-opening story about a huge real-world problem (or for some kids, a story that's personally familiar that might make them feel less alone) that's also a good, fun story?

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Wild Swans, by Jackie Morris

I was pleased as all get out last fall when The Wild Swans, by Jackie Morris (Frances Lincoln Children's Books, October 2015) , a beautifully illustrated retelling of one of my favorite fairy tales, was nominated for the Cybils in Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction, the category for which I was reading.  (NB- It ended up in the MG section of the Cybils, but more because it wasn't a book "for teens" than because it is really a book for 9-12 year olds.  It is really an all ages older than 7 book).  I very much appreciated her 2013 retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon (my review), and I was not disappointed by this one.

(And of course I meant to write about last fall when I read it for the first time, but didn't...and it surfaced yesterday when I was tiding up Book Pile #34 (the books on top of the DVD/CD shelf) and so here it is now....)

So this is the story of the princess (named Eliza) whose bothers (11 of them in this case) get turned into swans by their evil stepmother, and she has to spin shirts of nettles for them, all the while not saying a word, to turn them back.  And a prince falls in love with her, and takes her back to his castle, where she ends up being accused of witchcraft, but can't defend herself (because of the no talking rule) and just as she's about to be burned alive her swan brothers come and she throws the shirts over them.  And one is unfinished, leaving a brother still with a swan wing...

All this is here in Morris' retelling, but with a lovely detailed richness that a good-lengthed book (173 pages) and lovely pictures can afford that an anthologized 10 page version can't.  Morris adds two things of her own to the story, that I appreciated very much. The stepmother does a Bad Thing, but she has reasons that make sense and are emotionally convincing--not just greed or ambition for her own kids but reasons that come from her relationship with the king, and her past before she became queen.  And it's not just the prince falling in love with Eliza, but her falling in love with him too, not just because he's a pretty face but because he gives her space to do what she needs to do. 

It's a lovely book, beautifully produced, with exquisite illustrations, and if you like fairy tale retellings, go for it!  And now I get to go upstairs and put it neatly on the shelf of fairy tales where I will look fondly on it and Book Pile #34 has one less book in it yay me!

edited to add--Thwarted! The fairy tale shelves are full with books sidewise on top and so I will have to expand fairy tales onto the shelf above them which means lot of rearranging.  Nothing is as easy as it seems it should be...

The Seventh Bride, by T. Kingfisher

"I would follow this hedgehog into the mouth of hell," says Rhea, the heroine of The Seventh Bride, by T.Kingfisher (pen name of Ursula Vernon), at a difficult moment toward the end of the book.  She has reason to trust the hedgehog, which joined her on the dark and terrifying journey to her betrothed's home ("She was still going somewhere terrible, but she had a hedgehog, dammit").  Rhea, an unexceptional young miller's daughter, has been chosen by a lord to be his bride, and their difference in status is the least of the wrongnesses at work.  But at least Rhea has her hedgehog friend to stand beside her as she copes with the fact that her betrothed has been married six times before, and all but one of these wives are still alive (more or less). 

Rhea, with hedgehog assistance, completes various tasks the sadistic sorcerer lord sets her, and copes with the terror of her situation as best she can.  And in the end, with the help other wives, she wins freedom for them all.   It's a fine story, with bits that are disturbingly horrible, and Rhea is a fine heroine, and there were bits of humor (not just the hedgehog) that I enjoyed very much.   But somehow it's not a book I think I need to re-read to get more out of it--everything is pretty much right there, plot and character, without much subtle depth and nuance.  And I'm not quite sure what the point is of the tasks the evil lord sets Rhea to do, as her fate is the same regardless of whether she does them or not (he's not going to let her off marrying him), and so they were more divertissements of story rather than powerful pieces of it.  Still, The Seventh Bride makes for good reading, and I enjoyed it.

But I absolutely adore the hedgehog.   And if you enjoy fairy tale reimaginings, this might be right up your ally--it echoes both Bluebeard and The Robber Bridegroom. At the right is the cover of the ebook edition (as best I can figure); and it shows nicely some of the creepiness (zombie birds as garden décor, delivering scary advice....)

It could easily be shelved as YA, seeing as Rhea is a young teenager, but it isn't much like standard YA fantasy--there is no romance.

The Toymaker's Apprentice, by Sherri L. Smith

If you are not the sort of person who reads about 300 middle grade fantasy novels per year (which I do, give or take), you might think that mg fantasy is much of a muchness; you might not have much of a sense of how much Room there is in this little subgenre for surprises.  I am surprised by how often I still think "I haven't read this before."

The Toymaker's Apprentice, by Sherri L. Smith (Putnam, Oct. 2015) is a story I had never thought of, though I thought it would be one I knew--a reimagining of the Nutcracker.  Though the mysterious Drosselmeyer is here, and the Nutcracker given to the little girl, and the battle with the rats, the most traditional Nutcracker part of the story comes very close to the end, and there are no sugarplum fairies (no big loss!). 

Instead, the core of the story is the age old conflict between rodent-kind and human-kind, and how a tilt in the balance of population/power threatened the city of Nuremburg and even the whole rule of mankind.  And the heart of the story is a boy named Stefan Drosselmeyer, toymaker by training, who's lost his mother and who longs to see the world, and make wonders of clockwork ingenuity. The other heart of the story is a boy named Arthur, who is a mouse prince.  A mouse prince who is part of a monstrosity, whose life is constrained horribly both by the magic of his deranged mouse queen mother and by his monstrous life as one of seven heads on one mouse body.  Stefan and Arthur are like dark twins of each other, and much of the book is the story of Stefan's journey to Arthur's home island, where his mother is plotting mouse domination over humanity, alternating with sections from the point of view of the rodent protagonists/antagonists.

Smith's writing is powerful, taut, and vivid.  The story is thought-provoking and fascinating, with clockwork magic and human/animal magic in abundance.  I was gripped.  It is a good book.

Yet I am not quite quite sure just who I would recommend this to.  Obviously, anyone who screams when they see a mouse would not find some of the invading mouse horde scenes comfy reading (characters think there is water flowing down streets, but it is really mice.  That sort of mouse horde thing).   Anyone who loves the fairy sugarplum sparkle of the Nutcracker ballet and thinks that's what they'll get here will feel cheated.   Anyone who reads middle grade fantasy to revel in the power a young kid might have to change the world with sword or sorcery might find Stefan's lack of such traditional fantastical heroism (though he has plenty of determination and considerable mechanical ingenuity, and does some fine sword fighting toward the end) disappointing. 

So I think I would recommend this one to those who don't have a whole lot of expectations about what middle grade fantasy should be, but who are prepared to suspend disbelief and go along with a beautifully written mouse vs human fantasia of not inconsiderable length and sophistication.  Mouse vs. human has been done before, but never quite like this.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher for Cybils Award consideration.

Vietnamese Children's Favorite Stories, retold by Tran Thi Minh Phuoc

One of the rewards of being part of the first round of the Cybils Awards is the addition of interesting books to your to be read pile--I find that the opportunity for publisher to nominate a limited number of their own books results in getting review copies of things I'd never heard of, and am glad to now have read!  One such book in my category of Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction is Vietnamese Children's Favorite Stories, retold by Tran Thi Minh Phuoc, illustrated by Nguyen Thi Hop and Nguyen Dong (Tuttle Publishing, 2015).

This anthology of 15 hero tales, just-so stories, and straight out fairy tales, good for kids 6-9ish,  is both entertaining and informative.  I was happy to expand the range of my own interior holding of folktales, and particularly glad to learn from one of the hero tales (Le Loi and the Magic Sword) a bit of Vietnamese history that I was never taught in school (I very much like historical knowledge painlessly acquired in this way!).  The writing is smooth and nicely descriptive without being cluttered--I can easily imagine reading these stories out loud, and at three to six or so pages each (with lots of space taken by illustrations) they are a good read-aloud length. 

I found the illustrations pleasant, but not remarkable; they seemed to me to be not dissimilar in style to old fashioned American fairy tale anthologies of my own child hood back in the 1970s... but because you don't have to trust me viz illustrations, here's what School Library Journal said: "The delicate and detailed watercolor illustrations elegantly enhance the appeal of this work."  Here's what I can say with conviction--the cover is gorgeous and inviting as all get out.

So basically this is a fine book to offer the kid who wants fairy tales of many lands, be they Vietnamese themselves or not, and a very fine book for parents to get a hold of if they want to expand the imaginations of their young.  It's a good, solid, authentic addition to any library's shelves.

Here's the Kirkus Review, with which I am in agreement.

Hamster Princess: Harriet the Invicible, a most unusal Sleeping Beauty re-imagining by Ursula Vernon

I find the word "hamster" rather endearing.  I find the idea of a hamster princess who wants to go forth and have adventures likewise endearing.  And though I think Ursula Vernon is slightly better at drawing charming newts and dragons (as in her Dragonbreath books) than she is at drawing hamsters, she still draws appealing ones.   So I was primed to enjoy Hamster Princess: Harriet the Invincible (Dial, August 2015) very much, and I did.

Princess Harriet is ten when she learns that she is cursed to prick herself on a hamster wheel when she turns twelve, at which point she will fall into a deep sleep, from which the kiss of prince will awaken her.  Her parents have thoughtfully installed a resident, and suitable, prince, so that their daughter won't be kissed awake by a stranger.  Harriet does not react with typical princessly droopy-ness to the news of the curse, nor is she much interested in the prince.   What thrills her is the news that since she's fated to be around at the age of 12, until then she is invincible!  (although it seems to me that she could still be injured fairly badly and still be alive enough to be cursed at 12.....)

First she jumps off the highest tower of the castle, then off she goes on her faithful riding quail Mumfrey (who adds tons of cute) to battle monsters, sometimes saving people from dragons, sometimes saving dragons from princesses.  But she comes home for her birthday...and confronts the evil fairy who cursed her, inadvertently managing to turn the curse back on the fairy, who then falls into the enchanted sleep...along with everyone else in Harriet's castle!  Including the prince.

So clearly Harriet's next quest is to find a prince willing to wake everyone up with kisses...and then she can figure out how to deal with the fairy once and for all!

It's a tremendously enjoyable subversion of passive princess tropes, and the lovely absurdity of the animal characters is tremendously charming!  Though the language and vocabulary are somewhat more sophisticated than one would expect from a first chapter book for emergent readers, it is graphic heavy, making it very friendly indeed for uncertain readers in 2nd and 3rd grades in particular, or strong young 1st grade readers, or older elementary school kids, and even middle school ones, who like cute funny books, or grown ups who like saying the word "hamster."  I enjoyed it lots. And I think it's a great princess book to give to little boys so that they can get it into their heads that princess books can have broad appeal.

This broad appeal has created a bit of a dilemma for me--Harriet has been nominated for the Cybils as an Early Chapter Book (this is where the Dragonbreath books mostly ended up too).  I think it would be happy in that category, but I think it would also be happy as an Elementary/middle grade nominee (the category I'm the organizer for).   Elementary includes eight year olds, who will love it...I shall have to confer with the Early Chapter book chair, and look deep into the depths of my own mind to make sure I'm not wanting it just because I like it so much.

You can follow the link above to see all the Cybils nominees thus far, and perhaps nominate your own!

A Wicked Thing, by Rhiannon Thomas

Did Sleeping Beauty really wake to find a happy ever after with the prince who kissed her?  The answer, as told in A Wicked Thing, by Rhiannon Thomas (Harper Teen, Feb. 2015), is no, and the result is a very good story, if you like slower, introspective fantasy (which I do). 

Princess Aurora was sheltered all her life, kept in a virtual prison with almost no contact with anyone from outside the castle for her own safety.  But the curse found her, or perhaps she found it, none the less.  And she fell into her enchanted sleep, and was woken by a kiss a hundred years later.  The prince is nice enough, though shy and awkward, but at first Aurora can hardly think about him as a person; he is more place-holder in the story of her life.  Questions swirl madly about her--what has happened in the past 100 years, and why isn't she being filled in?  What do the current king and queen really want from her?  What does she want for herself, and is there any point to asking that?  For once again, she is being kept a virtual prisoner, locked in her room at night for her own safety.  The common folk are hungry and fed up, and the king's ruthless disregard for their lives fans the fires of their rebellion.  Aurora's awakening is supposed to be a miraculous cure-all for the woes of the kingdom, bringing magic and prosperity back to the land, but Aurora has no clue what she is supposed to do to achieve this (other than stand quietly while her wedding dress is fitted around her).

She is more than a helpless pawn, though--in her first life she learned a secret escape path from the castle, and she uses it again to visit the town outside.  There she meets a young revolutionary, who sweeps her off her feet--but does he really care for her, or simply want her for his cause? And then there is the prince of a neighboring country, were dragons awoke and flew out of mythology into reality while she slept.  He to is playing a game of his own, with Aurora as a game piece, but there is clearly more to him than meets the eye....And then on top of that, the enchantress who cursed her a century ago is not yet finished with her.

Aurora lacks experience with political intrigue, with romance, and with rebellion; the only experience she has is living passively under the threat of a curse.  She must decide how to use herself, and the magic within her, to make things right...and to do that, she has to figure out what constitutes "right." She has no reason to expect much from herself, and so she has no clue what expectations might be reasonable in terms of personal choice and agency.  And she has to stay alive in a new age where there are those who might well want her dead...

Because so much of the tension comes from Aurora deciding how and when to act, and because the story mostly takes place inside her head, and because it take her a long time to actually do much acting, some might find this a rather slow read.  I didn't; it was pretty much a single sitting whip through for me.  I really like character-driven political intrigue, and books where the characters question the roles life has assigned them, and I found Aurora's claustrophobic situation easy to empathize with and utterly believable.   I think the sequel will be more dramatic (and perhaps have dragons!) and I'm looking forward to it lots. 

Here's another review at The Book Smugglers.

Dearest, by Alethea Kontis

Dearest, by Alethea Kontis, is the third book in a series about the seven daughters of a woodcutter, each of whom is magically gifted with the attributes of the seven days of the week in the old rhyme (Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, etc).  They are named for the days of the week too, and this third book is about Friday (loving and giving).  (aside--as a Wednesday's child, "full of woe," I was never fond of this rhyme.  We had to draw a picture of ourselves as our day of the week;  I drew stick figure me in a purple dress standing in the rain....but I don't hold it against the books!)

When Sunday married a prince, Friday's world expanded likewise.  But all is not well in the realm--a magical ocean has flooded the land, bringing its people to the brink of famine.  And seven swan brothers have taken refuge in an old tower in the castle; they are being perused by their enemy, determined to make sure that the curse on them can't be broken.  And Friday, loving and giving, is determined to help them and their sister do just that.

The seven swan brothers is one of my favorite fairytales, and this is a retelling that sticks pretty closely to the original.  There is also reference to the goose girl story, though not central to the plot, and a whif of Peter Pan.

This is just pure escapist reading goodness for those who like fantasy where the bad things are clearly not going to be allowed to take over, and where there's a nice, fairly straightforward romance.  It does not make any particular demands on the reader, but simply sets the stage for the story and lets all unfold very nicely indeed.   Those who have read the previous two books (Enchanted, and Hero) will be pleased to see the sisters again, those who have not might be a bit confused, but not so much so as to be deterred.   

On the slightly downside, Friday sure is loving and giving, so much so that she's not the most satisfyingly nuanced character ever.  And it was so clear that all would end well that there's not much tension to the swan story; the much more mundane possibility of famine and efforts to avert it was more interesting to me.   The first two books were twistier, and so more mentally engaging.

That being said, younger teens, and older readers willing to relax into the story, can look forward to being enchanted!  I don't think I'll ever need to read it again, but I sure did enjoy it the first time around!

Valiant, by Sarah McGuire

Valiant, by Sarah McGuire (Egmont USA, April, 2015), is a pleasing fairy tale retelling (of The Brave Little Tailor) for older middle grade readers who just venturing YA-ward (which is to day, ages 11-14).

Saville is the daughter of an extremely skillful tailor, but no matter how hard she has tried to be good, and no matter how straight her seems are sewn, he loves his silks and find cloths more than he cares for her.   He is determined to become tailor to the king, but is laid low with a stroke just as he and Saville are about to arrive at the capitol city.   With no other obvious way to look after him and herself, Saville disguises herself as a boy, and assumes the identity of his assistant.  She succeeds in winning the king's approval, and is able to support her father, and a young orphaned boy, Will, who she cares for deeply. 

But the kingdom is under threat from giants, reputed to be devourers of human flesh.  To save Will, who has been captured by two giant scouts, Saville leaves the safety of the city to confront them herself.  And by trickery, straight from the classic fairytale, she convinces them of her strength (squeezing water from a stone, that is actually cheese, and throwing a stone that is actually a bird higher in the air than even a giant could) and makes it back to the city with Will.   But to her dismay, she is now hailed as the kingdom's champion, and her identity as a girl is unmasked to the king and his court.   And the giants are just as much as threat as ever, especially when it is revealed that their leader is a deathless, villainous character of legend....

In the meantime, Saville finds herself falling in love with the king's cousin, Lord Verras, working with him to try to keep the kingdom from falling to the giants and their evil duke.   In the end, it is not any feat of strength that saves the day, but Saville's intelligence and ability to conceive of the giants not as monsters, but as people. 

It is not the fastest read ever, especially the first half or so; I found myself able to put it down without pain, but I kept coming back to it.  I liked Saville very much--she is a very decent, thoughtful person, motivated by love, and although some readers might be disappointed that her romance with Lord Verras does not burn as brightly (and take over the story) as much as the romances do in many YA books, I found it satisfying (although I find myself wondering how things will work out long term, because of the class difference--her a tailor's daughter, him a lord; I can imagine this causing tension down the line....), and likewise, some might be disappointed that Saville doesn't actually DO much beyond figuring things out, but since I enjoy ancient stories holding the solution to problems more than I enjoy people whacking each other with swords, this was fine with me.  McGuire does a nice job twisting the original tale with added nuance and emotional heft.

In short, a pleasant one for fans of fairytales; I'd offer this one to those who enjoy Jessica Day George's books about the 12 Dancing Princesses in particular.   Here's the Kirkus review, which pretty much matches my own opinion.

A Kiss in Time, by Alex Flinn, for Timeslip Tuesday

A Kiss in Time, by Alex Flinn  (2009), is a sleeping beauty reimagining, in which a modern boy, Jack, kisses awake a European princess, Talia, who's been sleeping for three hundred years.  Although Talia hasn't actually travelled through time, it is as if she has--everything in the present is of course strange to her.   And the whole castle, and it's inhabitants, were all asleep in true fairy tale fashion, so it is as if a whole late 17th/early 18th community were whisked to the present.

When Jack goes AWOL from the European Tour his parents had sent him on, he did not expect to end up crashing through briars and finding a sleeping castle.  Nor did he expect that kissing the sleeping princess would wake her up (obviously he is not a fairy tale reader).  But Talia, who had pricked herself on a spindle 300 years earlier, knows that the kiss was destined to happen.  But is Jack really the true love destined for her by the terms of the enchantment?  Jack certainly doesn't think he is--his first impressions of Talia are not at all favorable.   But when she travels back to Florida with him, and he gets to know her (and she gets to know herself better too, outside the constraints of her protected princess life) he begins to think otherwise.  And when the evil fairy interferes again, Jack embraces his role and set out to make happily ever after come true....

At first both Jack and Talia are unpleasant company; both are kind of spoiled and needy and unappealing.  It doesn't help that it is really icky to kiss a strange girl you just happen to find sleeping in her home.   Happily they grow up (remarkable and unbelievably quickly in just one week; little flashbacks showing Talia being decent to the Poor while being a princesses are more awkward than convincing), and happily the circumstances of their meeting are enough to keep things interesting until they become more pleasant company!  It is not a particularly realistic romance, but when fairy magic and destiny are involved, realism isn't really something one can expect.  

Disbelief has to be suspended pretty actively in just about every other aspect of the story as well.  Talia's adaptation to the 21st century is also a lot less fraught than I imagine would really be the case.  Her observations of American teen life are mildly amusing, but not tremendously insightful or thought-provoking.   Don't go reading it for a convincing look at the late 17th century, because the past as presented here is an odd medieval enlightenment mash-up that doesn't convince at all.  And don't be expecting that Jack's fraught relationship with his parents will be convincingly resolved--it is a pretty magical happy ever after on that front too. 

However, it you enjoy fairy tell retellings that add interesting twists, this is worth reading as long as you don't have expectations of greatness with regard to plot or character and are in the mood to accept an unbelievable story somewhat uncritically; I read it in a single sitting, with my mind peacefully turned off, and as a result was able to enjoy the premise just fine. 

One Witch at a Time, by Stacy DeKeyser

One Witch at a Time, by Stacy DeKeyser (Margaret K. McElderry Books ,February 10, 2015) is an extremely satisfying middle grade reimagining of Jack and the Beanstalk.  It's also the sequel to The Brixen Witch (an equally satisfying middle grade retelling of the Pied Piper story), though it can be read as a standalone just fine.

Winter in the village of Brixen has bee long and hard...and so it's important that Rudi get good bargains when he goes to town to trade his family's cheese.   But the day goes sour when his companion, nine year old Susanna Louisa, makes a bargain on her own--one of Rudi's family cows for the "magic beans" being offered by a strange foreign girl.   Rudi doesn't believe the beans are magic...but he's wrong.    And it's a magic that's alien to Brixen, and if its allowed to stay, the balance of things will go awry.

At least, this is what Brixen's own witch says, and Rudi has no reason not to believe her.   So Rudi and Susanna set off up the mountains to the next village up, where the beans came from--Petz, a snowbound land whose people have been trapped behind a magical barrier created by their own witch, a giant.  The only way in, or out, is by magic--when they plant one of the beans at the boarder, a magical beanstalk grows....

But there Rudi and Susanna meet Agatha, the strange girl who traded the beans in the first place...and though she agrees to travel with them to the giant's home, she's less concerned about balancing magic than she is with bringing summer back to Petz....which complicates things more than somewhat.

Then to make matters worse, Susanna brings one of the giant's chickens home with her to Brixen, and it starts to lay golden eggs....And the giant comes looking for it!

It's a good story, well-told, with many little twists on the original adding lots of interest!

Like The  Brixen Witch, One Witch at a Time is the sort of fairy tale in which magic is slotted comfortably into a real world context, in this case, a historical Bavaria.  The strong sense of real place, and the believable characters, makes for very satisfying reading, especially for kids for whom the silly doesn't always work.   It's not a wild and whimsical fairytale fun (like The Hero's Guide series, or E.D. Baker's books); instead, I'd give these to fans of Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted and A Tale of Two Castles. 

What sets DeKeyser's books apart is that they are the only younger middle grade fairytale retellings (9 to 10 year olds) I can think of that have a boy as the central protagonist (feel free to let me know I'm wrong!).  Rudi is an ordinary boy, not Chosen, or specially gifted--just reasonably smart and brave, who does what he feels he must as best he can.  There's enough magic and adventure to satisfy the avid fan of fantasy, but this solid base of relatibility (I don't like the word, but can't think of how better to say it) might also win them fans among kids who don't necessarily dream of being young wizards themselves....

But really, what's most important to me is that I enjoyed both the books! 

(note on the cover--the cover for Brixen Witch tilted perhaps too strongly toward historical fiction; the cover of this one goes off in the opposite direction.  It doesn't convey anything about what this book is really about (a Jack and the Bean Stalk retelling in which there are no witches who wear pointy hats).  This might make it hard for the kids who will really love it (and I think there should be lots of those) to find it).

Disclaimer: review copy of One Witch at a Time received from the author.

Little Red Quaking Hood (Princess Pink and the Land of Fake Believe #2), by Noah Z. Jones

I am a fan of  Princess Pink (Princess being her first name, Pink her last) an un- girly-girl of color who travels through her fridge to a land of fractured fairy tales.  So I was very happy when Little Red Quacking Hood (Scholastic, August 2014) appeared in my mail last August, and I read it very quickly so I could pass it on the same day to a young friend, another girl of color who loved the first book to pieces.  And  I wrote some thoughts down then and there, and saved that post, thinking, for No Good Reason at all, that the book was coming out in October....

 

It is now October, and I see that the book came out in August.  I am Ashamed that I did not more successfully help promote a book I think fills a pretty empty niche--easy reader books that are subversive fairy-tale fantasy adventures starring a girl of color who subverts dominant paradigms of girly girls.

 

In this episode, Princess and her friend Moldylocks help Scaredy Pants Wolf stop Little Red Quaking Hood from stealing the pies from his bakery.  But Little Red is not acting alone--it is Grandmother Quaking Hood who is the mastermind behind the pie thefts!   And when she gets her wings on Princess, things get rather tense....

 

It is funny, silly, and smart--great for emergent readers.  And I personally really really appreciated the illustrations of Princess and Moldylocks and the Wolf dressed as ducks.  And I shall go make up for my Reviewing Fail by nominating it for the Cybils.

 

Here is my review of Book 1 (Moldylocks and the Three Beards).

 

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Egg and Spoon, by Gregory Maguire -- best Baba Yaga ever!

The nesting dolls of Russia open to revel smaller and smaller dolls, until you reach the baby who's the smallest of all.  Egg and Spoon, Gregory Maguire (Candlewick, September 9 2014), takes readers on a  journey through a historic Russia of myth and magic that's the opposite of that progression.  It's a story that starts small, beginning in an isolated, lonely place, and becomes large and larger still, with its characters travelling every onward till even home, the ending point, will never be as small and lonely again.  And, for the most part, it's a tremendously entertaining journey.

(Note on the metaphor above-- the nesting dolls are a Central Image/Metaphor within the text, such as could be the subject of an academic essay, so I didn't pick it random, nor, I see now (having looked at the Amazon page) am I the only one to use it.)

But in any event.

Round about the early 20th century, lightning strikes a bridge in the middle of nowhere, Russia, and a train is forced to stop.  On the train is  Ekaterina (Cat), a young lady of privilege on her way to the court of the Tsar to be offered to Anton, the Tsar's godson.   Outside the train is Elena, a starving peasant girl who's mother is dying, whose father is dead, whose brothers have been conscripted.   Chance, in the form of a Faberge egg beautifully decorated with scenes from Russian fairytales, meant to be a gift for the Tsar, interferes with their lives.  Elena finds herself on the train headed for Saint Petersburg, Cat finds herself in a peasant hovel.

Cat never saw the sense in believing that stories were real, but when she is herded to the hut of Baba Yaga herself, she has to change her mind pretty quickly.   And the story she finds herself in turns out to be a big one--something has gone wrong with the magic of Russia--the Firebird has disappeared.   This misfortune is spilling over into the real world; the seasons have gone awry, and famine and flood cover Russia.

Baba Yaga, being somewhat more than a witch, is compelled to fix things with Russia, so she and Cat head to the city in the chicken-legged house.  There they meet with Elena and Anton (the Tsar's godson), and the three kids and Baba Yaga set out to Do Something.

So at this point we are about 343 pages into the story.  After a somewhat slow start, for which I blame the Intrusive Narrator and the heavy underlining of peasant suffering, I had been enjoying the journey, watching things getting progressively more surreal and magical (Baba Yaga is an utter joy--very puissant, in a funny way, and the two-girls-switched plot was very entertaining).  At page 343, with the whole cast assembled, and the problem identified, I expected things to be a straightforward quest in which the kids would somehow heroically fix things.    I was also expecting the Firebird (who is, after all, missing), to continue to be the central problem.

But there's another twist--the problem is a different one,  and the solution to the problem is kind of ..... disappointing.   I felt that Baba Yaga could have fixed things without the kids, or the kids could have fixed things without Baba Yaga (although they would have had transportation difficulties), and I felt that I was being given a moral lesson on how to live a good life.  It's not that I demand heroic deeds in every story, and internal character growth and magical drama are plenty satisfying, and I certainly approve of people appreciating life and not consuming to excess etc., but so much self-awareness had already occurred, and so much magical drama had already happened at this point that the last hundred pages felt like a bit of a fizzle.

So it wasn't exactly a Story that satisfied me.  But taken as a series of set piece on the journey, it was lots of fun, and it was a pleasure to watch things expand, all out of anyone's control!   There were bits that made laugh out loud, bits that were beautiful, and bits that strained my ability to suspend disbelief, but still in an enjoyable way.

Definitely read it for the sake of Baba Yaga, if nothing else.  She is brilliant.  She rules the whole book.

Here's what I'm wondering about--the kids aren't exactly heroes, but rather they are passengers in a story.  Will this please the young adult audience who are the target audience?  I am thinking that this is one that will actually be more pleasing to grown-up readers of fantasy who occasionally read young (the sort that enjoyed Catherynne M. Valente's Fairland books).   Those readers will not necessarily expect the same level of Young Character at the Forefront as an actual YA reader might.   (And I bet that only adults will get the poisoned Kool-Aid reference).  

But then I think of the magical wonders in this fairytale journey--images and imaginative delights that really are magical, and think that actually the best reader for the book might be the younger than YA child who loves nothing more than the escape offered by the beauties and dangers of the best sort of fairy tale--the sort who's pictures stay in your mind a lifetime.

Am I glad to have read it?  yes, I enjoyed it.  Will I re-read it?  probably not.  Would I have devoured it as a child?  quite possibly.

Here's what The New York Times said, and here's what Kirkus said, and just to show another use of the nesting doll metaphor thing, here the review at Educating Alice.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.

Why I loved The Castle Behind Thorns, by Merrie Haskell

It has been week of little reading and less blogging (because of single-handedly running a library booksale), but happily one of the few books I did manage read--The Castle Behind Thorns, by Merrie Haskell (Katherine Tegen Books, upper middle grade, May 2014)--was an utter winner.  I realized I had read it in a literal single sitting, as I found to my cost when I tried to move again.

Here is what I liked, and what you might like too.  

The Castle Behind Thorns is a Sleeping Beauty re-imagining, set in a village in medieval France.  Just outside this village is the castle of the Boisblanc family,  sundered and riven a generation ago, surrounded by a wall of impenetrable thorns. 

--This is good because there isn't a lot of really good historical fantasy for kids in general, and because medieval France has not been done to death as a fantasy setting; I can't think of a single other fantasy novel in which Joan of Arc is mentioned.   This is also good because Sleeping Beauty is a fine story to re-imagine, as it can be done so many different ways.  The Sundering is awfully cool too--everything in the castle, and the castle itself, has been magically rent asunder.

The main character, a boy nicknamed Sand (short for Alexander), mysteriously awakens one morning to find himself inside the Sundered Castle.  He is the smith's son, and a handy, crafty sort of boy who instead of falling into dark despair because he is trapped in a ruined castle starts trying to bring order to its chaos (though he is no Pollyanna--he is plenty unhappy about his situation).

--Sand is a great character, and I loved the crafty side of things.  I also loved the descriptions of all the broken things that needed fixing!  I also love how this makes the point that when you are in a situation that is utterly awful, the best thing to do is to find the things that you can fix, and fix them.  A good life lesson, without being at all preachy.

The second main character is a girl who has a really interesting story arc and a fine backstory and, though not as sympathetic as Sand, was someone who I liked reading about.

--the way she is introduced to the story was fascinating and I'm not saying any more except that there is some gender subversiveness at work that is perhaps a smidge at odds with the reality of medieval France but perhaps not (it is not my area of academic strength).

Obviously there is magic at work, what with the Sundering, and the thorns, and all...but what's really cool here is that it is the sort of magic that you might find in a medieval Christian fantasy France (think cults of saints).

--this is totally cool because goodness knows the people of the middle ages believed in lots of magical and miraculous things that were very real to them, and it was such a fun, refreshing change to see this world-view being used in a fantasy novel.

Here's what I especially, personally liked (though other readers might find it a negative thing)--nothing much Happened, except towards the end.  The story relies heavily on descriptions, and character interactions, and some backstory, and this is of course reasonable given that everything happens behind the thorns, with a cast of two young teens isolated from the world (quickly interupting myself to note that this is middle grade.  This is not a fairy tale Blue Lagoon).

I find it very pleasant (especially when I am frazzled, as I was when I read this one) to curl up with a book  about people puttering around, trying to get by and find solutions to problems without too much actual conflict.   (And when I am too tired to clean my own house I like to read about other people cleaning their magical castles/English cottages/19th-century abandoned mansions, etc.).  I think, though, that the magic of the enchanted castle is strong enough to hold the attention of most of the target audience, especially those who have not yet become so accustomed to barrages of fast and furious action that they can't read anything else.

So in any event, do not let the fact that I did not find this "fast-paced" and "action-packed" stop you from giving it to handy boys!

(My own 11-year-old boy is currently re-reading Laini Taylor's fairy books, Blackbringer and Silksinger, and was not willing to drop those to try this one, so I am lacking his Target Audience perspective, which I find slightly annoying.  Because what's the point of having a reading child if he can't help you with your blog posts?  But I think he would like it....)