The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom

Christopher Healy
2012 Walden Pond Press

When the pampered and perpetually protected Prince Frederick fails to keep Cinderella's interest after the ball is over, Cinderella takes off on a new adventure, leaving him behind. Can Frederic, who has never been outside the castle in his life, find the guts to go after her? And keep going after her, in spite of witches, giants, dragons, and three other princes with princess problems of their own?

This book reads like an animated film, and it's easy to visualize it that way with the help of all the whimsical illustrations. The story is chock full of fun and quirky characters, like vegetarian trolls and really grumpy dwarfs... I mean dwarves (they're sensitive about the spelling). A good read-aloud, laugh-aloud the whole family can enjoy.

My only worry is that Fox Animation has the movie option right now. Why not some studio with a more impressive track record? Come on, this one is totally worth it.

Troll Fell

Katherine Langrish
HarperCollins 2004

This is the kind of book I like best.

Peer has no time to grieve over his father's sudden death. His cruel uncle shows up at the funeral, claims Peer and all his father's property, and drags the boy back to the dismal mill which he shares with Peer's other uncle, his equally nasty twin. Half-starved and forced to do all the work around the place, it doesn't seem it can get any worse for poor Peer.

Then Peer learns his uncles have plans for him. They've bargained with the Troll King to provide a human slave as a wedding present for an important royal match. Peer has to find a way to escape before the midwinter wedding, but where can he go that his uncles won't find him?

Katherine Langrish spins a delicious tale, with trolls and wicked uncles you love to hate, and a clever and kind-hearted hero you love to cheer on. Lush prose paints the Scandinavian setting in perfect detail, with lively descriptions that are a joy to read. The story rolls faster and faster to the climax, with one disaster piling on top of another, until I was just aching for the characters and couldn't see how they could possibly get out. And then it got even worse!

Fans of the folktale will adore this adventure in the lands of the far north. Recommended for ages ten and up.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Grace Lin
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers 2009

Yes, there is justice in this world. How do I know? Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon won a Newbery Honor.

Minli lives with her mother and father in the shadow of fruitless mountain. Their home is small, their clothes are plain, and they can hardly grow enough rice for themselves. But Minli loves listening to her father tell stories at the end of each day, stories that eventually inspire her to leave home and seek to change her family's fortune.

It's a dangerous road, but Minli meets each obstacle with a clever mind and a kind heart. She gains friends, wisdom, and answers as she traverses a web of stories woven together into one exquisite tale. This book is a perfect little gem, a great read-aloud for children, and a treasure-trove of insight for young and old alike on the nature of true happiness. Rich color illustrations by the author in Chinese folk-art style illuminate the pages. Sweet as ripe peaches, precious as a pearl, this joyful book is for anyone old enough to read or be read to.

Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow

Jessica Day George
Bloomsbury, 2008

On the promise that her impoverished family will be blessed with riches, a young girl goes to live for a year in an enchanted palace with a mysterious white bear. Just as she begins to unravel the dark secrets of the curse on her host, her curiosity and fear drive her to betray the man she has come to love. To redeem him, she must journey beyond the edge of the world and face the Troll Princess herself.

East o'the Sun, West o'the Moon, always one of my favorite folk-tales, finds new life in this charming adaptation. I loved how Jessica Day George followed the traditional storyline so faithfully, but added an intriguing new twist of her own. She floods the pages with details about Scandinavian culture and language. A good, solid performance, and a recommended read for ages 10 and up.

The Game

Diana Wynne Jones
Penguin, 2007

I am ashamed to admit that this is my fiftieth review on this blog, and only my first review of a Diana Wynne Jones book!

Time to set things right.

Haley has never met her cousins before. Her strict and fussy grandmother has always kept her away from the rest of her unruly family. But Haley has crept off to the forbidden mythosphere before, a place woven of colorful story threads, threads with ends that trail through the ordinary world. She's delighted to find that her cousins know about the mythosphere too, and joins them in their secret game, a sort of scavenger hunt where the players collect glass slippers, dragon scales, and golden apples.

There's more than mythical baubles out in the mythosphere. Haley finds clues to the location of her missing parents, her true identity, and the reason her Uncle Jolyon banned the family from the mythosphere in the first place.

Uncle isn't going to be happy.

This book is Diana Wynne Jones at her best--full of wild, world-hopping magic, bubbling with jolly chaos, bristling with danger, and grounded in honest emotion. A little piece of perfection, "The Game" blends real mythology and real life in fantastic ways. For readers twelve and up.

Keturah and Lord Death

Martine Leavitt
Front Street, 2006

Sixteen-year-old Keturah Reeve has one simple dream - a true love of her own, a cottage of her own, and a sweet wee babe of her very own. But one day she wanders into the woods and is lost. When Death comes for her as a cold and comely young lord, she pleads for her life with a tale like the ones she tells around the village fire. Intrigued by her story, Death grants her another day in which she must find her true love or be taken.

So begins this lyrical fable, a story of life and death, hope and transformation. I marvel that so much wisdom and beauty can be packed in two hundred pages. Keturah's shabby village throbs with life, full of characters that seem to have been plucked from a fairy tale but then given real-life hearts and souls. The prose is exquisite - Keturah has the eye of a poet and the voice of a storyteller. Her quest to find an everlasting love takes so many turns it kept me guessing right up until the end. After closing the book I felt like I'd woken from a dream that meant more than I was ready to understand.

Highly recommended for readers age twelve and up.

The Mermaid Summer

Mollie Hunter
Harper & Row, 1988

A hundred years ago, so this story begins. In it, Mollie Hunter draws a Scottish fishing village as only one who has known one can do, making the characters seem as real as your own neighbors. She understands their fears and struggles, how the sea is both their provider and their terror. Superstitious they are, so says Mollie Hunter, the most superstitious folk you'll find. All except old Eric Anderson, who doesn't believe in mermaids.

The mermaid is not amused.

Mollie Hunter's mermaid is a frightening creature, strong and dangerous. It will take all the wit and courage that Eric's two grandchildren can muster in order to keep the mermaid from taking her vengeance on the whole village. At 120 pages this book is a quick read, but the poignant story will stay with you long after the cover is closed. Recommended for ages 10 and up.

The Boggart

Susan Cooper
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 1993

When Jessup and Maggie get a telegram saying their dad has inherited an ancient castle in Scotland they think they're going to be rich. Excitement dampens when they learn the old ancestral home is a crumbling wreck. There's no money to fix it up, and they can't move to Scotland, and so it seems the only option is to sell the property.

Sad to part with their tarnished treasure, the family decides to have some of the furniture shipped to their home in Toronto, just so they can have something of their inheritance to keep. But once the furniture arrives, things began to happen - strange things. Mysterious things. Dangerous things. Perhaps the old castle wasn't empty after all.

This imaginative tale shows off Susan Cooper's greatest gifts - her ability to blend folklore magic with real life, her strong sense of family relationships, her heartfelt characters, and her keen storytelling. Recommended for ages 10 and up.

Silver on the Tree

Susan Cooper
Margaret K. McElderry Books 1977

In this final novel of the Dark is Rising Sequence, all the principle characters from previous books come together with all the prophetic rhymes and magical objects they've collected throughout the series. A journey through time, space, history and legend brings them to a final spectacular confrontation with the Dark. Exactly the sort of fantasy adventure my thirteen-year-old self craved.

Yes, I loved this book, but the very end made me angry. To tell you why would be a spoiler, so I'll refrain. I will say that after I read this series I had a fun time wondering if anyone I knew was an Old One - a member of the secret magical society charged with protecting the world from evil. I thought my eighth grade English teacher could have been, but the cafeteria cash register lady was probably from the Dark.

The Grey King

Susan Cooper
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 1975

Fantasy is sadly underrepresented in the Newbery awards. Susan Cooper's The Grey King defied that trend. Why did this one win the Newbery and not any of the others in the series? They all have the same lyrical prose, the same deep foundation in the legends of the British Isles, the same sweeping conflict between good and evil. My personal opinion is that the ALA has an unusual affinity for moody stories about outcast orphan boys and their all too mortal dogs (see Alcatraz Vs. The Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson).

In this story, Will Stanton of previous books is joined by his new found friend Bran Davies in a quest to find a legendary golden harp and wake a band of sleeping warriors that will help turn back the rising tide of the Dark. One of my favorite parts of the book is the Welsh pronunciation lesson that Bran gives to Will - I still turn to it when I want a quick reference for how to say a word with double d's or lots of y's in it.

Greenwitch

Susan Cooper
McElderry, 1974

Many people have a book that they read over and over again as a child. This one was mine. It begins with the Drew children indignant that the grail, the artifact they discovered in Over Sea and Under Stone, has been snatched from the museum, presumably by the powers of the Dark. They return to Tresswick to try and solve the mystery, and encounter none other than Will Stanton, who is there on the same errand. Having the characters from the first two books of the series meet up lends the story the delightful excitement of getting some of your good friends that don't know each other together for the first time.

My favorite part, though, was the Greenwitch. A creature of the wild magic drawn from an ancient spring rite, the Greenwitch holds beneath the sea the secret key to the grail. Without this key, the grail is useless to either Dark or Light. Who will risk drawing her forth and unleashing her untameable powers? Who can persuade her to give up her precious treasure?

Oh, you'll never guess! You'll just have to read it.

The Dark is Rising

Susan Cooper
1973

I read this book way back in 1986, when I was 13 years old, and this is what I wrote about it in my journal:
"I liked it because of the way it made you think while telling a neat story with lots of good description. It's more alive than some fantasy and I like the way it mixes magic with real life."

My husband read this book to my children last fall. The prose is stunning! Lyrical! Beautiful! Weaving together the ancient mythology of the British Isles with contemporary characters and settings, Susan Cooper wraps Christmas holiday for the Stanton Family in an epic battle between dark and light. As a child I loved the magic and the adventure. As an adult I love the poetic language and the story built on the power of folklore.

When I found this book way back when I gave it to my brother and my sister and told them they just had to read it. We all read the entire series within a week or two, and then adapted Susan Cooper's magical version of the world into our own imagination games for years. I'm glad now to share it with my children.

Fablehaven

Brandon Mull
Shadow Mountain 2006

This book gets so many things right that other fantasy novels for children typically miss. First of all, the adults are smart, reasonable, and willing to trust the children when they show they are worthy to be trusted. Second, there is a strong theme running through the book about how keeping the rules affords you strong protection against evil, and how breaking the rules can have serious, unforseen consequences. It is the cautious, obedient character who has the power to save the day at the end because she has kept the rules of Fablehaven and offended no one.

Brandon Mull has a spectacular imagination. His powers of description are stunning, and he is endlessly inventive. The fantastic creatures that inhabit Fablehaven are fascinatingly varied in their personalities, intelligence, and behavior. He's not bad with humans either. His two main characters scrap so much like real siblings I wonder if he bugged his kids' rooms and listened to their arguments as research for his book. The book is not quite Newbury quality - there are a few places where the dialogue stops sounding real and instead becomes a thinly veiled explanation for the reader. In spite of this, Mull does create a very convincing sense of peril in Fablehaven, a place both wonderful and treacherous. It is just the sort of fantasy world you love to believe in.

The Hollow Kingdom

Claire B. Dunkle
Henry Holt and Company 2006

Recently orphaned Kate discovers that the hideous Goblin King has decided to kidnap her and take her to his underground kingdom as his bride. Can she evade him long enough to escape the Goblin lands? Will her great-aunts and her indifferent guardian believe her preposterous story? Can one girl stand against a whole kingdom of strange and magical creatures determined to have her as their queen?

In "The Hollow Kingdom," Clare Dunkle takes elements of folklore and weaves them together into a tale of surprising twists and wonderful invention. The evil in this book is truly evil, and doesn't always come from the direction one might expect.

This is another book I wish had been in print when I was in high school. It is just the sort of thing I wanted to read but couldn't find.

Fablehaven 3: Grip of the Shadow Plague

Brandon Mull
Shadow Mountain 2008

No author I know can top Brandon Mull for sheer imaginative power.

Kendra and Seth Sorenson are the grandchildren of the caretakers of Fablehaven preserve, one of the few places left on earth where magical creatures can live on in an increasingly skeptical world. The trouble is, not all magical creatures are nice. In fact, some of them are downright evil. All the worst ones have been locked away in a magical prison, and if they ever get out, the world as we know it is basically over.

Mull creates a world where the stakes are high, danger is real, and almost everyone is under suspicion. His book has an endless parade of fascinating magical creatures, each with their own habits and personality. Fablehaven 3 contains Mull's best paced plot so far, with lots of adventures, an intense action climax, and an ending that leaves the reader eager for the next book.

Mull introduces some great new characters in this book, and only kills off about half of them. He's still having trouble with Grandma Sorensen, who had more personality during the time she had been turned into a chicken, but his tween-aged characters live and breathe as always. Seth is still my favorite, and I'm glad to see him begin to discover more of his abilities in this book.

So go out and buy your own copy. You certainly can't borrow mine. My husband is going to start reading it to our children tonight, and we just can't wait!

Palace of Mirrors

Margaret Peterson Haddix
Simon and Schuster 2008

Palace of Mirrors by Margaret Peterson Haddix is a princess tale of mistaken identities. The character, Ella, from Haddix's earlier book, Just Ella, makes an appearance, but this new book isn't really a sequel. The story stands on its own.

The characters were the best thing about the book. The setting is your typical princess book setting, a very well behaved Medieval Europe that has been through the wash a few times so as not to horrify the kids. As for the story, some very important plot points were a little beyond my willing suspension of disbelief. But the characters were great! I almost didn't mind where the characters were or what was happening to them - I liked them so much.

But the reason I am going to buy this book, besides the fact that I'm a dedicated Haddix fan, is that she did her research on harps! I loved the details on harp-playing in the book, all accurate by the way, and wished for even more. It makes me wonder if Haddix plays the harp, knows a harper, or simply spent hours on the internet reading everything she could find.

Girls ages 9-12 should adore this unusual twist on the "princes raised as a peasant" theme.