A Review of The Seven Tales of Trinket by Shelley Moore Thomas

I already liked Shelley Moore Thomas’s books, the Good Knight series, which are picture books and easy readers about the interplay between a very patient, kindly knight and three difficult yet sweet little orphaned dragons. So of course I was excited to read her middle grade fantasy, The Seven Tales of Trinket.

This book is deliberately episodic and self-reflective, which is a little tricky to pull off. Fortunately, Thomas pulls it off. We follow a girl named Trinket and her friend Thomas the Pig Boy as they travel to find out what happened to Trinket’s father, a handsome bard who has been missing for years. Along the way, Trinket also collects stories, turning each one into a song. The stories are Trinket’s and Thomas’s adventures, but they later become tales that Trinket tells in other villages.

To give you an idea about their adventures, I’ll just list the chapter titles, which are numbered tales: “The Gypsy and the Seer,” “The Harp of Bone and Hair,” “The Wee Banshee of Crossmaglin,” “The Faerie Queen and the Gold Coin,” “A Pig Boy, a Ghost, and a Pooka,” “The Old Burned Man and the Hound,” and “The Storyteller and the Truth.” As an author’s note explains, Thomas’s tales are based primarily on Celtic folklore. But the author adds her own twists in the telling, created dimensional characters as she goes.

The language is clean and clear, with occasional touches of poetry to burnish the narrative. For example, Thomas the Pig Boy is always hungry. He explains, “Never was a lad born with as fierce a beast in his belly as myself.” And here's my favorite paragraph:

There were bones on the shore. Bones of large sea beast called whales. Whiter than the clouds, they rose from the rocks like the ghosts of old tree branches. I could hear Thomas gasp at the sight of them.

The tales are touched with humor, magic and intrigue. “As if she read my mind, the dark-eyed girl spoke. ‘You wonder about me, as well you should.’ I paused, my bread midway to my bowl of broth. ‘I am a liar,’ she said.”

Fragments of some of the stories show up in later stories as certain characters reappear for different reasons. The overall arc is Trinket’s search for her father, but as she moves onward, she becomes something in her own right, a singer and storyteller. In fact, a young bard. She also handles herself pretty well and learns along the way, though the book is far from didactic. Thomas the Pig Boy makes a sturdy, if hungry, companion. He and Trinket take turns saving each other when things go wrong. (These are pre-teens, however, and there isn’t the slightest hint of romance between them, just loyalty and friendship.)

The author did something a little different with the ending, and I’m not sure quite how well it flows. However, readers will regain their footing by the last page and will be very glad they’ve read Trinket’s seven tales. Shelley Moore Thomas’s Good Knight books are charming, and so is The Seven Tales of Trinket—a well-paced, magical middle grade read.

Note: You can watch the book trailer for The Seven Tales of Trinket here.

A Review of Dragonswood by Janet Lee Carey

Wilde Island, A.D. 1192, where the dragons and the fay live in a sanctuary called Dragonswood. In a nearby village, Tess hides her own magical abilities or the fact that she sometimes slips away into the forbidden forest and has seen fairies and dragons. She has enough trouble dealing with her father the blacksmith, who beats her.

When the royal witch hunter comes to her village, Tess is quickly targeted. Under torture, she betrays the two friends who have visited the woods with her. The three girls barely manage to escape with their lives and hide in the forest. There they meet one of the royal huntsman, Garth. He gives them shelter, but Tess is afraid to trust him.

After taking new risks to make up for her earlier betrayal, Tess sees her friends settled. She also finds out some of Garth's secrets. Eventually Tess visits the fairy realm, where she discovers the truth about her own heritage. But the fairies, like her human father, seem likely to use her for their own purposes. And Tess has decided she has a purpose of her own. To get what she wants, she will have to make strange new allies and trick the tricksters who surround her.

Janet Lee Carey does some nice world building with her versions of dragons and the fairy kingdom, and juxtaposing them with witch hunters and political intrigue adds still more spice to the mix. She touches on themes of loyalty, betrayal, and forgiveness. What motivates people like the witch hunters, or like Tess herself? I found Carey's stubborn heroine especially appealing.

The trees of Dragonswood rustled in the wind along the boundary wall. Mist blew up from the sea and swirled at our feet like witch's hair. I looked to the pines, longing to scale one.

"When's the wedding, Tess?" Meg said.

"What wedding?"

"You're to marry Master Percival soon," Meg reminded me.

"Never."

"You're seventeen. If not Master Percival, it will be someone else."

I'd had other suitors; none were rich enough to please my father until this latest one. He wanted to rope me to an older man with money, one who kept his wife in the same fashion he'd kept his own. Master Percival had grown children. He'd outlived three wives already. I'd seen their bruised faces when I'd met them at the town well. The welts on their arms just like mine and Mother's.

"Wedlock is a hangman's noose," I said.

Dragonswood is a suspenseful adventure with a romance between Garth and a leery Tess that develops slowly and subtly. I very much appreciate the way the author actually ends the book, even while hinting at later books that will feature other characters.

Note for Worried Parents: This book for teens presents violence in the form of child and spousal abuse (see above), as well as torture and the threat of death from witch hunters. It also describes the fairies' random sexual promiscuity as part of their culture.

A Review of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

It didn't surprise me to see that the jacket quote on this book is from Neil Gaiman, who says, "A glorious balancing act between modernism and the Victorian fairy tale, done with heart and wisdom." After all, Valente's book reads like a cross between Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Gaiman's own Coraline. (Which is ironic, since Coraline has been compared to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. But structurally, Valente's book is really much more Alice-like than Coraline is.)

In case you weren't aware, Valente is the writer of dark, beautifully strange and successful adult fiction, most notably The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden and Palimpsest. She wrote this, her first children's book, in a series of crowd-funded online posts, reminding me of the way her Victorian predecessor, Charles Dickens, first wrote his books—as magazine serials. Then The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making got its due by winning a 2009 Andre Norton award. In a publishing story for the 21st century, the book contract followed.

The book itself is mostly not 21st century in tone, except for an overall stylistic cleanness and a subtle tongue-in cheek feel. Valente's ornate approach and her love of props like smoking jackets and velocipedes hark to the steampunk subgenre (or "mythpunk," as she has half-jokingly called her work). In any case, when young September runs away from the dullness of washing her mother's teacups and playing with her family's "small, amiable dog," she does so with a fine heartlessness that the author informs us is typical of children:

One ought not to judge her: All children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless at all. September stood very generally in the middle on the day the Green Wind took her, Somewhat Heartless, and Somewhat Grown.

Yep, there's an intrusive narrator commenting along the way. This technique sometimes backfires or is overdone, but here it feels completely of a piece with the rest of the Victoriana.

But on with our plot: A girl named September agrees to be taken to Fairyland by the Green Wind, a Harsh Air who rides the Leopard of Little Breezes. He issues various warnings, e.g., "Obviously, the eating or drinking of Fairy foodstuffs constitutes a binding contract to return at least once a year in accordance with seasonal myth cycles." None of this deters September, who is, after all, wearing an orange dress.

She liked anything orange: leaves; some moons; marigolds; chrysanthemums; cheese; pumpkin, both in pie and out; orange juice; marmalade. Orange is bright and demanding. You can't ignore orange things. She once saw an orange parrot in the pet store and had never wanted anything so much in her life. She would have named it Halloween and fed it butterscotch. Her mother said butterscotch would make a bird sick and, besides, the dog would certainly eat it up. September never spoke to the dog again—on principle.

Hmm, I'm only on page 6, and I keep finding things I want to quote you. This is a very good sign, though not a very good way to write a book review (I remark, in rather Valente-ish tones). Suffice it to say that September goes on to meet three witches, one of whom is a wairwolf and the husband of the other two. She agrees to retrieve a magic spoon for one of the witches, mostly because she wants a storybook-type quest. She next meets a wyvern with its wings chained who becomes a quest companion. But even as this author seems to do something ordinary when it comes to fantasy, she doesn't: The wyvern turns out to be the son of a wyvern and a library. His name is A-Through-L, though he lets September call him Ell.

September and Ell come across a golem made of various kinds of soap and nearly get eaten by Glashtyns while crossing the river. September does lose her shadow, bargaining for the life of a Pooka child who looks like a jackal cub. Then she reaches the capital, and rather than obtaining the magic spoon, she finds herself sent on a dire quest by the terrible Marquess, the dictator of Fairyland who at first glance looks like a little girl crowned in ringlets. September does manage to rescue a marid boy named Saturday on her way out of town.

Of course, the Marquess has given September a deadline, and the best way to cover a lot of ground fast is by lassoing a mount from a herd of migrating velocipedes. "Remember, they are fast and tall and vicious! Many have perished or, at least, been roundly dumped off and bruised in the attempt to travel by wild bicycle." These dangerous, magnificent beasts are one of Valente's best creations, as is the woman who regularly rides with the herd, Calpurnia Farthing.

September's adventures grow still more dangerous after she reaches the Autumn Provinces. I will give you one more passage as Valente's narrator introduces these lands:

I suppose you think you know what autumn looks like. Even if you live in the Los Angeles dreamed of by September's schoolmates, you have surely seen postcards and photographs of the kind of autumn I mean. The trees go all red and blazing orange and gold, and wood fires burn at night so that everything smells of crisp branches. The world rolls about delightedly in a heap of cider and candy and apples and pumpkins, and cold stars rush by through wispy, ragged clouds, past a moon like a bony knee. You have, no doubt, experienced a Halloween or two.

But, we learn, our autumns are nothing more than pale imitations of the richness of autumn in Fairyland. (Ahem: "a moon like a bony knee"? I am in awe of that metaphor!)

Only autumn is the harbinger of winter, and therefore of chilly death. Following a feast with some slightly unnerving spriggan scholars, September ventures into the woods to find what the Marquess has sent her for, a treasure in a glass casket. There September meets her own death, a small creature at first. Until it grows bigger.

That's a taste of what's in this book, but you'll find so much more. Valente's Fairyland is both beautiful and dangerous, a place where life and death rub shoulders more often than you might wish. September has blithely chosen the road to heartbreak, and she certainly has her heart wrenched a time or two in this story. There is a dark streak in the book, the reason I mentioned the Coraline comparison above. Valente seems very interested in the idea that "the dark and the light go together," as my mother likes to put it.

Make no mistake, blood is required in this book. But then there is a magic key that flies around trying to catch up with September throughout her journeys, and it is nothing less than a shining scrap of winged hope. Which makes September something of a Pandora, I think.

Some of the edgy touches that crop up in Valente's tale are presented tongue-in-cheek. For example, there's a running joke about how September misunderstands the clause about not eating fairy food. ("Witch food must be okay! And dragon food! And...") We learn, too, that human visitor September gets classified as Ravished, kind of like Persephone, rather than as a changeling or a child who has merely stumbled through a hidden gate (or wardrobe!). I suppose it's technically because the Green Wind is bit of a rogue and lures her away, though that's certainly the extent of it.

Speaking of ravished, what ravishes me literarily is freshness, or what I call the F Factor. A book that's pleasingly new in its style, voice, description, language, metaphors, plot, and/or characters makes me swoon every time—and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making qualifies on all counts.

Note: The book is illustrated by one of my favorite illustrators of all time, Ana Juan. And check out the very cool book trailer.

Note for Worried Parents: The book is a little dark, but it's no stronger than Coraline and is much more of a fantasy story than a horror one. Some mournfully deep/painful notes are sounded in spots; however, younger MG readers might miss that stuff altogether, to tell you the truth!

A Review of Small Persons with Wings by Ellen Booraem

All you other MG fantasies out there, beware: this is the one to beat in 2011! Funny, poignant, and original, Small Persons with Wings carves out an instant niche for itself in the world of children's literature.

Mellie Turpin is the first-person narrator, explaining that she still hasn't lived down her kindergarten humiliation as the girl who claimed she had a fairy and then couldn't prove it. Fidius had played with her endlessly—until she said she wanted to take him for show-and-tell. Then he disappeared, leaving her to face the wrath of a class full of five-year-olds who soon came up with a nasty nickname for chubby Mellie: Fairy Fat. To top things off, Mellie's artistic parents, who had seemed to accept Fidius's existence as real, called him her imaginary friend when questioned by the horse-faced school counselor. Under the weight of so much betrayal, Mellie told herself sternly that there was no such thing as fairies and retreated into the world of facts. She dedicated herself to earning straight A's and became a minutiae-spouting know-it-all, especially with regards to numbers and art history. For years she continued to be bullied by the other kids, still called Fairy Fat.

Now 13-year-old Mellie's parents have received word that her dad's father has died and they have inherited his old inn. The Turpins move there, planning to renovate the inn and sell it. Only once they arrive, things get weird fast, beginning with the introduction of one of the book's most marvelous characters, a fairy named Durindana. Mellie is in the pub part of the decrepit inn when she sees something fall out of the chandelier. As she gets a closer look, she panics:

No, no, no, not again not again notagainnotagainnotagain...
...Options: (a) Unfreeze, run out the door; (b) Count the bricks in the foundation; (c) Both of the preceding options; (d) Stomp on her, just in case.
There's never a school counselor around when you need one.

Eventually Mellie realizes that the fairy is terrified of her and, um, drunk. Looks like Durindana has been into grandpa's liquor! She starts babbling in French, but eventually switches to English, calling Mellie a "warm dolt." (The Parvi are very chilly to the touch, capable of leaving freezer burn on human skin.) In talking to Durindana, Mellie finds out more about the fairies, enough to realize that her parents have known about them all along! Mellie storms off to confront them. She's just spent eight years being bullied and forcing herself to worship facts, and for what? "All the time I'd been counting stuff and organizing stuff and keeping King Kong under control, I could have been reading Roald Dahl."

Mellie's parents confess that the Turpin family has a long tradition of sustaining the Parvi Pennati or "small persons with wings" (apparently they hate being called "fairies"). While she stews over that one, the police chief who lives next door shows up with his son Timmo in tow. He's suspicious about Grand-père's death. Mellie wonders if Timmo might become a friend, but quickly rejects the idea: she's been treated too badly to believe that's possible.

Next a strange woman named Gigi who says she's the real estate agent comes along and pokes her nose into things, obviously using some kind of magic to get people to do what she says. Gigi doesn't seem quite human, though Mellie can't figure out why. After that the entire SPWW tribe moves into the inn's pub, which they redecorate using illusion in a French Baroque style to rival Versailles. Timmo finds out about the Parvi and gets roped into the subsequent adventure involving a missing ring that holds part of the diminutive tribe's magic. But Gigi wants the ring, too. And the grandfather clock on the second floor of the inn just won't shut up...

The portrayal of the Parvi as a sort of madcap miniature version of the French court is hilarious, but the real heart of this book is Mellie. She's prickly, she's stubborn, she's soft-hearted, and she's very real, not to mention a wonderful narrator. Here's another excerpt:

Left temporarily to myself, I wandered down to look at the Bishop's Miter Pub, which I'd never been alllowed to see. I stood out on the sidewalk for a minute, enjoying the fresh air. A freckled kid about my age came out of the regular two-story house next door and started walking over. Oh great, I thought. Animal life. He was pretty scrawny, but he looked to be my age. His light brown hair was longish and straightish and flipped out at the ends like a misshapen ski hat.

The boy, Timmo, is another solid character, as are Mellie's parents, who are surprisingly nice. (Booraem has said she did this on purpose. She was tired of all of the terrible parents in children's literature!)

In addition to the humor, the adventure, and the magic, Small Persons with Wings has a strong anti-bullying theme. Mellie is the main victim of bullying, but if you count carefully, I think you'll find that there are four more victims in this book. Yet Booraem doesn't let her story get bogged down by her theme, instead weaving it naturally into the narration. And she has the good sense to show how Mellie changes in her response to bullies rather than simply punishing them or removing them from Mellie's orbit.

About the only thing I found distracting were a few passages explaining the different types of Parvi magic. Otherwise, the book flows beautifully. The missing ring is found and turns out to be capable of conveying the truth to people and destroying all illusion. Only, as the author points out, would that really be such a great thing? Magic starts flying fast and loose, with Gigi menacing everyone and more than one plot twist to keep readers guessing.

There's also a lovely idea about Mellie "growing into her grandeur" that I know you'll like. So find this book. Read it. And stop using the F word. Because obviously, the correct term is "small persons with wings"!

Also: Check out the interview with Ellen Booraem at The Enchanted Inkpot!

Note for Worried Parents: This is a book for middle grades. I will mention that one of the tricks the bullies play on Mellie is to put a tampon in her back pocket as she goes up to solve a math problem on the board. So there are a couple of references to that. Then we get some drinking by both fairies and by Mellie's grandfather, who is an alcoholic and needs to get help.

A Review of Under the Green Hill by Laura L. Sullivan

Though this is low fantasy, it has a stately tone that echoes Tolkien's work, as well as a premise and a setting that felt enough like The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe to me that I had to check to be sure the characters really had access to e-mail. (They do!) According to Kirkus, you should also be reminded of E. Nesbit's work.

The story begins with a new fever that is hitting the children of the United States. To protect them from the illness, Professor Morgan and his wife send Rowan, Meg, Silly (Priscilla), and James to visit their great-great aunt Phyllida Ash and her husband Lysander. As human guardian of the most important fairy locale in England, Phyllida is understandably concerned: this is a seventh year, when the fairies select what they blithely call a champion and the humans fearfully call a teind. As Phyllida puts it, "Four children here, at Midsummer, on a seventh year? Even the villagers hide their children at the teind times." And that's even before she discovers that the professor's colleagues have shoehorned in two extra kids: horrible Finn and timid, allergy-prone Dickie. (Though Meg is secretly intrigued by Finn's good looks, even she has to admit that he's sneaky and arrogant.)

Phyllida duly gives the children a list of rules when they arrive at the Rookery. In addition, she tells them they are to stay in the house (or rather, the mansion) that night while she and the other adults attend a local festival. Naturally, her words are guaranteed to inspire someone like Finn to dare the others to sneak out and spy on the festival. It never occurs to Phyllida, who we learn is known as the Guardian or simply The Lady, that modern children might find her rules so ridiculous that ignoring them feels entirely sensible. After all, Phyllida informs the kids that the forest is off limits and they must not swim in the stream. They must never try to ride the wild ponies or eat food that anyone offers them. They must not give their name to anyone who asks, but should answer politely. And they must not kill the ants, who are "really fairies who have grown very old."

Um, right, the kids think, rolling their eyes, and that night they proceed to break three of the rules.

To the fairies, the Morgan children are a gift, since the family has a little fairy blood. Disguised as a boy, Puck-like Seelie Prince Gul Ghillie quickly herds the Morgan children to the Green Hill, where the lovely Fairy Queen asks Rowan to be her champion in the Midsummer War. Glamoured, he agrees, to the dismay of his sister Meg. (As the author points out more than once later in the book, the teind and even the "war" are no sacrifice for the fairies, but they mean death to one of the human champions.)

In the meantime, Finn and Dickie have become separated and have their own rather terrifying encounters with fairy folk. Finn concludes that the Morgan children are leaving him out deliberately. He recruits Dickie to research fairies in the estate's library, then uses the information to spy on the Fair Folk. In the process, Dickie ends up with a lot of knowledge and some secrets of his own.

As for the Morgan children, they set about training for war in the garden, coached by Gul Ghillie, who provides them with ancient, magical weapons. Meg continues to worry about Rowan, trying to think of a way to stop him from going into battle. But even she falls under the spell of Gul and the weapons, mastering the use of an enchanted longbow.

Sullivan explains things like fairy glamour and history thoroughly along the way, so that to a certain extent, this book acts as a primer about fairy folk and how dangerous they can be. (In this regard, it reminded me of Lesley M.M. Blume's recent treatise on urban fairies, Modern Fairies, Dwarves, Goblins, and Other Nasties: A Practicial Guide by Miss Edythe McFate.) You'll find a cavalcade of imps, nymphs, and legendary monsters in Under the Green Hill, together with handy information such as how to acquire the ability to see fairies and how to escape from malevolent oak trees.

Here's the Morgans' first glimpse of the Fairy Queen:

The woman, or the form of a woman, was mounted on a tall charger with a pale-gray dappled coat, a beast as much beyond the clumping plow horses of the May Day march as this woman was beyond the May Queen. Her mount was arrayed in jewels of white and green that seemed not merely to reflect light, but to give off light of their own. He pranced on legs that appeared too delicate for such a tall animal—he stood as high as a draft horse, with a broad chest and haunches that bunched with power held in check. He seemed aware of the value of his burden, and walked so lightly that his gilded hooves bent no grass, left no mark of his passing.

Though Sullivan strains credulity on occasion, e.g., not letting Phyllida and nosy Finn catch the Morgan children at their endless weapons training in the garden, or having the children master said weapons with astonishing ease, these are relatively minor considerations, and she provides some nice plot twists as the story progresses. Who is the other champion, and why? Will Finn get caught spying on the fairies? Will Meg find a way to save her brother's life?

A sequel is obviously in the making, as the Morgan children continue their association with the fairies, for better or for worse. Meg, in particular, seems to be a Chosen One. So look for a second book in a year or two.

I'll end by pointing out that the solemnity of Sullivan's style is both a blessing and a curse. It's a poetic approach that suitably reflects the grandeur of the fairy court and its human Guardian; however, it might strike some children as being too ponderous. If, on the other hand, you or your bright young reader is tired of all those warp-speed, television-style fantasies and want a deeper pool to swim in, Under the Green Hill is the book for you.

You may also like an older book with a similar mythology and setting, Pat O'Shea's The Hounds of the Morrigan.

Note for Worried Parents: There's peril here, a couple of violent acts, and a lot of scary fairies. In general, the tone is mature (in the grown-up sense). This book would probably be best for older or more sophisticated middle grade readers.

A Review of The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz

The Night Fairy is one of those books that have been reviewed by other bloggers already, including the well-known Betsy Bird, so I wasn't planning to review it myself. Then I read the book. And felt compelled to talk about it.

First of all, night fairy Flory is not the sweetly pink-dressed winged sprite you tend to read about in old-fashioned books for dear little girls. She's more like the fairies in Laini Taylor's books, Blackbringer and Silksinger. Only Flory is less civilized than even those fairies. Here Newbery Award-winning author Laura Amy Schlitz creates fairies who are tiny and sentient, yet also part of the fauna of the wild. Their wings and even their magic are presented as just another adaptive survival strategy, and something the fairies grow into. For example, we're told:

Young fairies have no one to take care of them, because fairies make bad parents. Babies bore them. A fairy godmother is an excellent thing, but a fairy mother is a disaster.
Because fairies do not look after their children, young fairies have to take care of themselves. Luckily, they can walk and talk as soon as they are born. After three days, they will not drink milk and have no more use for their mothers. They drink dew and suck the nectar from flowers. On the seventh day of life, their wings unfold, and they fly away from home.
On the night of Flory's peril, she was less than three months old...

The fairies have a truce with the bats, but a bat tries to eat Flory, breaking off her wings. This traumatic event drives Flory into hiding, and she decides to become a day fairy. As she thinks things through and takes action, it will be very clear to readers that Flory is young and uninformed. But she is hard-working and determined. Little by little, she learns to fend for herself, coping with the demands of the unfamiliar day world.

At first glance, this is simply an adventure story with fairies. In fact, I would take that farther and call it a survival story, comparable to Gary Paulsen's Hatchet. But then, Flory's survival has as much to do with socialization as with the challenges of finding food and shelter. (And by the way, Schlitz has fun giving us Flory's disdainful, baffled analysis of the human "giant" in whose backyard she lives.)

Having been thoroughly shaken up by her life-threatening encounter with the bat, Flory's first impulse is to react by becoming fierce, using the spells that come to her to practice defensive and sometimes offensive magic. When she discovers a stinging spell, she is pleased: "I like that spell," said Flory. "I'm never going to forget it. I'll practice it over and over—and if I ever see a bat again, I'll sting him until he squeaks." The narrative goes on to say:

If a person—whether she is human or fairy—spends most of her time thinking of ways to sting, it is bound to show. In the weeks that followed, Flory practiced her stinging spell so often that she began to have rather a prickly look. Her nose and chin grew more pointed, as did the tips of her ears.

Flory uses the spell to tame a young squirrel named Skuggle, who hopes to eat her, to eat anything, really. Flory rides the squirrel around the garden, in return helping him get food, for example from the supposedly squirrel-proof new birdfeeder. It isn't a friendship at first; we're told that these two are using each other. But it gradually becomes something like a friendship.

Flory misses flying and decides she wants to ride a hummingbird, but the wild, nearly alien birds refuse to cooperate. Even when Flory is in a position to force the issue, the hummingbird is true to her essential nature—a brilliant piece of writing on Schlitz's part.

The absence of other fairies means Flory has to acquire social skills in a roundabout way, but gradually she learns to be a bit less self-centered and to have more respect for the unique, yet basic desires of the different animals she encounters.

I was astonished by how well Schlitz taught subtle life lessons while telling a strong, fast-paced adventure story. If someone were to ask me what the book is about, I would have to say, "Forgiveness." The author shows us in more than one situation why this isn't an easy lesson to learn. Flory not only grows from the height of one acorn to the height of two acorns during the course of the book, she becomes a better person, with a wider view of the world.

The Night Fairy is the best of everything a book should be—an adventure, a fresh take on fairies, vivid storytelling, and a tale in which the main character's experience of becoming will sweep readers along with her. To top it off, this book is physically beautiful, with a design and interior illustrations so perfectly suited to the story that it's hard to believe the illustrator isn't the author. (Instead she's Angela Barrett, illustrator of gorgeous versions of Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, and The Emperor's New Clothes.)

Is it too early to start talking Newberys? I know fantasy doesn't always win, but if I were on the committee, I'd make this an Honor book, anyway. At 117 pages, The Night Fairy is a pocket-sized treasure. Look for it.

Note: Some of the other reviews in the blogosphere are from Betsy Bird of Fuse #8, Charlotte's Library, Oops Wrong Cookie, Fantasy Book Critic, Books 4 Your Kids, A Year of Reading, and Doret of The Happy Nappy Bookseller. As the latter points out, Flory appears from the text and artwork to be black, another nice touch.

Note for Worried Parents: At least one reviewer expressed concern about Flory's fierceness, her acquisition of a thorn dagger and her willingness to use it. There are also scenes of peril involving predators, most notably a praying mantis. The Night Fairy is middle grade fiction, though, and is appropriate for most 8- to 12-year-olds and even some 7-year-olds.

Update: Visit The Night Fairy's website.

A Review of Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore

Steampunk meets Jane Eyre in this first book by Dolamore, who also throws in some fairies. We eventually learn that since the last Fairy War, the Sorcerer's Council has divided into two factions, with the enlightened previous leader of the council missing under suspicious circumstances. The new leader, Soleran Smollings, has a small mind—he is prejudiced against the fairies who live in the next kingdom over and against people like our heroine Nimira, a dancer from the Arabian-type land of Tassim.

Nimira is living hand-to-mouth as a "trouser girl" in a dance hall in a fantasy city resembling nineteenth-century London. Then she is chosen by the aloof and handsome Hollin Parry (AKA Mr. Rochester) to sing with his expensive mechanical piano player. The maids at Parry's estate whisper that the automaton is haunted, and in fact, it has scared away previous singers with its moans and imploring looks. Clever Nimira suspects there's more to the situation than a mere haunting. She waits until no one's around and uses a simple code to ascertain that the pianist is actually a person named Erris who is under an awful enchantment.

Erris is only one of the house's gothic mysteries, which include a screaming woman guarded by the terrifying housekeeper...

And Parry shows signs of falling for his new singer, taking her on picnics and having her dressed in expensive ladies' gowns rather than the costumes of her native land. But Parry is basically a wimp.

You know how in movies today, they often cast twenty-somethings who are attractive, but seem to lack the depth and emotional maturity to handle the demands of their plots? Well, Dolamore's cast is a bit young that way. The peril doesn't seem quite as perilous as it should, and the romance doesn't seem as real as it should. None of this is helped by an abrupt and undercooked ending. Even books anticipating sequels need to end, coming to a natural and rewarding stop.

Still, Magic Under Glass is a pleasant YA romance with fantasy elements and hints about continuing adventures for our star-crossed lovers. The author's world building, with its threat of intrigue and war in regard to the nearby land of the fairies, is promising. Your tween or teen daughter may very well enjoy it, having read all of Stephenie Meyer's books, Beautiful Creatures, etc.

But you really should hand her some YA fantasy with a little more oomph, say, R. J. Anderson's Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter, Maggie Stiefvater's Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception, Lisa Mantchev's Eyes Like Stars: Theatre Illuminata, Act I, or Faeries of Dreamdark: Blackbringer by Laini Taylor. Or perhaps Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Wrede and Stevermer, to go back a bit farther.

Note for Worried Parents: There is a mention of one of the dance hall girls sharing the bed of the manager, and the point is made that men come to the dance hall to see the girls' legs rather than to hear them sing, but that's about it. Still, this book is meant for teens.

Update, 1-30-10: This book has recently been the subject of an uproar because the main character is clearly described as being dark-skinned in the text - basically middle Eastern, though in a fantasy land - but the cover photo shows a white girl. Publisher Bloomsbury is now going to reprint all of the jackets with a more appropriate look. (Bloomsbury came under similar criticism a few months ago for the cover of Liar by Justine Laralestier.) Great news for those of us who believe that books about brown people are just as appealing as books about lighter-skinned characters. A good book is a good book, period.