The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home is the conclusion to Catherynne Valente’s Fairland series for middle grade readers. The first book was a revelation, and is the book that introduced me to Valente. I adored that book, loved it. I enjoyed the second and third books as well, though I don’t think they ever managed to really re-capture the magic in the first book. However the fourth book, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland, was a huge disappointment. Still, even given that I’d been […]
Teenage hawk identity crisis.
I never cared as a kid, but as an adult, wow; this book is bleak. Well, I shouldn’t say “bleak,” because ultimately, the book does have a relatively uplifting ending, and I tend to associate bleakness with a lack of hope or optimism, which isn’t this series at all, no matter how dark it goes. But I think this book and what it’s willing to do with Tobias’s character is an example of one of the many reasons I loved this series so much when […]
A dark children’s book that’s not really for children
Back when I took a Children’s Literature course in college, my wonderful professor had a raffle every week, and one week, I won this copy of Polly Horvath’s The Canning Season. My prof had read Everything on a Waffle and loved it, and wanted to know how this book would be. Now that I’ve finally read it, I can tell her. I’m still processing what I just finished reading. I’m not even really sure I understood everything. As I said in my Goodreads review, I […]
The fight gets personal for Rachel.
It’s weird that what struck me the most about this second book in the series after reading it for the first time in lo these many years is how small everything feels. As the series goes on, every book features our young heroes taking on bigger challenges with more and more devastating consequences, but here, the mission is small, and Rachel’s goals even smaller. It’s emotionally intimate. The Visitor is Rachel’s first POV book. Rachel is the beautiful, fashion-conscious one, but she’s much more than […]