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Faith Smyth is perfectly ordinary, out of place in her competitive family, with only tiny blue Bus Bear to keep loneliness at bay. When a substitute teacher named Mr. Lancelot sends Faith on a mission to the custodian’s office, she finds a pile of letters--and forgotten-at-home Bus Bear with a Paddington-like tag labeled “for emergency courage.” Those letters reveal dark secrets: a pirate who prefers butterflies to murder; a very cranky mermaid; Bo Peep’s lamb kebab shop; the Tooth Fairy’s tax bill. It’s the Gingerbread Man behind all of this, and if Faith does not return these letters to their owners, there will be no more stories! All the action is told rather than shown; Bus Bear changes form (and messages) as needed and Faith herself turns into a cloud at one point--the cute factor is ramped up everywhere to 11. Readers are assured that ordinary Faith is very brave indeed, that her very name, Faith’s myth, is the indicator of her destiny. Not a patch on Lyn Gardner and Mini Grey's Into the Woods dyad for meta-literary fairy-tale fun. (Fantasy. 7-10)
