Flippant fantasy fun.
Just-turned-13 Jenny continues her adventures in fairyland but finds that she can’t always win (My Very UnFairy Tale Life, 2012).
Jenny knows she’s going on a dangerous mission this time, but she can’t bring herself to say no to best friends Trish and Melissa when they insist on coming along. Despite life-threatening dangers, the two friends remain enchanted about visiting the land where fairy tales originate, even though the evil witch Ilda has drained the land of its magic. If she is to restore the magic and save fairyland, Jenny must complete three impossible tasks in only three days. She manages to finish the first two with the help of Trish and Melissa. Jenny has never before encountered failure, but she has to cope with it when she can’t complete the final impossible task. But can Jenny really give up? Staniszewski again keeps her tone light and frothy with plenty of wry humor. A polite troll, keeper of the second impossible task, informs the girls, “Incidentally, my name is Irwin. I think we should be properly introduced before I suck the meat off your bones.” Middle school friendships offer a nice theme, as does Jenny’s casual acceptance of her fantasy life. The humor is balanced with a poignant subplot when Jenny learns that her long-lost parents disappeared from this very place, leading her to believe that she might be able to find them.
Flippant fantasy fun. (Fantasy adventure. 9-13)Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7930-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
Awful on a number of levels—but tidily over at last.
The rebellion against an evil archmage and his bowler-topped minions wends its way to a climax.
Dispatching five baddies on the first two pages alone, wand-waving villain-exterminator Vega Jane gathers a motley army of fellow magicals, ghosts, and muggles—sorry, “Wugmorts”—for a final assault on Necro and his natty Maladons. As Necro repeatedly proves to be both smarter and more powerful than Vega Jane, things generally go badly for the rebels, who end up losing their hidden refuge, many of their best fighters, and even the final battle. Baldacci is plainly up on his ancient Greek theatrical conventions, however; just as all hope is lost, a divinity literally descends from the ceiling to referee a winner-take-all duel, and thanks to an earlier ritual that (she and readers learn) gives her a do-over if she’s killed (a second deus ex machina!), Vega Jane comes away with a win…not to mention an engagement ring to go with the magic one that makes her invisible and a new dog, just like the one that died heroically. Measuring up to the plot’s low bar, the narrative too reads like low-grade fanfic, being laden with references to past events, characters who only supposedly died, and such lines as “a spurt of blood shot out from my forehead,” “they started falling at a rapid number,” and “[h]is statement struck me on a number of levels.”
Awful on a number of levels—but tidily over at last. (glossary) (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-26393-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Who can't love a story about a Nigerian-American 12-year-old with albinism who discovers latent magical abilities and saves the world? Sunny lives in Nigeria after spending the first nine years of her life in New York. She can't play soccer with the boys because, as she says, "being albino made the sun my enemy," and she has only enemies at school. When a boy in her class, Orlu, rescues her from a beating, Sunny is drawn in to a magical world she's never known existed. Sunny, it seems, is a Leopard person, one of the magical folk who live in a world mostly populated by ignorant Lambs. Now she spends the day in mundane Lamb school and sneaks out at night to learn magic with her cadre of Leopard friends: a handsome American bad boy, an arrogant girl who is Orlu’s childhood friend and Orlu himself. Though Sunny's initiative is thin—she is pushed into most of her choices by her friends and by Leopard adults—the worldbuilding for Leopard society is stellar, packed with details that will enthrall readers bored with the same old magical worlds. Meanwhile, those looking for a touch of the familiar will find it in Sunny's biggest victories, which are entirely non-magical (the detailed dynamism of Sunny's soccer match is more thrilling than her magical world saving). Ebulliently original. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: April 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-01196-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
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