The Goblin Wood by Hilari Bell

Summary: Makenna lives with her mother, a hedgewitch, in a village peacefully until the reigning regime claim Makenna’s mother worships the devil. Fleeing to the forest, Makenna teaches herself magic and forms a bond with the goblins that live there. She seems to be winning against the oppressive regime when a disgraced knight Tobin comes along to regain his lost honor.

It’s been a while since I read The Goblin Wood, but my old review of it was written in haste, and I’m not so sure I want to rely on it. Where to start then?

Plot: The plot here, while not complex is quite good. It sets up both Makenna and Tobin’s situations well, and has them meet in a realistic manner I believe. Bell also does a good thing for their characters. While they both see each other’s sides in the end (Makenna doesn’t think all humans are scum and Tobin doesn’t think the goblins are evil) it takes a while for both of them to get there. It makes the idea of it more believable and I think much more credible as well. The villains also strike me as pretty believable, mind 
controlling their people into taking up doctrine. The pace of the writing was also pretty well set. 


I apologize for the lack of analysis here, but it has been some time since I read it.  


First Published: 2003

The 13 Clocks by James Thurber

Summary: Zorn of Zorna must find thousands of jewels and get the thirteen broken clocks of the castle to toll at five o’clock if he wants to marry the princess

The version of the book I read had a foreword by Neil Gaiman, which biased me to it just a little bit, because Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors. But I’m glad it did. This is another story book that I feel like I would have loved as a kid because it had the right mix of things for a young reader. The plot creates a quest one would find in a fairy tale only more detailed. The pictures are kind of old school water colors, like the ones I used to have in the ones my mom and I would read together (how’s that for an abject analysis), but they are nice and very well done. I also liked how the villain could be quite snarky and how the hero, Zorn of Zorna, played out his quest. The pacing went along at a good speed and there really is nothing like this story.

First Published: 1950

The Great Good Thing by Roderick Townley

Summary: Princess Sylvie has lived all her life in a story book, and just as she begins to find it dull, the book burns up and she and her family must escape into the mind of their only reader. Over time though, that reader begins to forget, and so Sylvie must journey to the mind of a writer and get the story down for good.

Here’s the kind of book I wish I had had when I was first beginning to learn how to read, because the story takes itself seriously, but not too seriously. The writing is fun, and fast paced (I finished the book in less than two hours) and the story is a great plot of what books do when we aren’t reading them. Sylvie makes a good protagonist for young readers as well. She sets out to do what she wants to do and does it. She is courageous and heroic, the perfect inspiration for those early readers. I’m having trouble analyzing this from memory, because the book is just so sweet, and the idea was so great and the writing did a pretty good job too!  A great story for kids

First Published: 2002

The Stepsister Scheme by Jim Hines

Summary: Danielle Whiteshore (aka Cinderella) finds out that just because a fairy tale ends doesn’t make it “Happily Ever After.” Instead, her husband, the Prince, gets kidnapped by her two wicked stepsisters. So she sets out with Talia (Sleeping Beauty) and Snow (White) to get him back.

Okay, so I was little biased towards this one out of the gate. On the one hand, I heard great reviews from all of my friends and on another, I LOVE fairy tales and their retellings. So, yeah. But I have to say regardless of all that it was still a really good story. For one thing, it was wrought with a lot of conflicting stuff. For one thing, they heroines almost loose. I’m not joking. The bad guys have them right where they want them, and Talia actually abandons Snow and Danielle to a horrible fate because she’s terrified of what magic can do to her.

For another thing the characters are quite well written. You see reason behind their action, even though Hines does go to some lengths to explain things that could have been a little better done, but still, he writes all three women rather well (Talia as jaded, Snow as a romantic and Danielle as a little naïve). Plus I thought the way they were written coincided very well with their original fairytale back stories, though he does tend to use the less popular versions for their back stories (which I also really liked, because not enough of those get attention).

This turned out to be a really imaginative retelling and I am very happy to have read it. 

First Published: 2009