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