Of Giants and Ice

First-time author Bach offers a fresh take on the whole fairy-tales-made-real theme. Rory Landon, known best for her Hollywood parents, finds herself at the Ever After School. At first she assumes the school is a role-playing game gone overboard, but eventually she accepts the truth: magic is real and each student is a Character destined to star in a variation of a Tale. To Rory’s discomfort, she finds that she is well-known for her own sake, not for her parents–and she doesn’t understand why the evil Snow Queen is talking about her. When Rory’s new friend, Lena, starts her own Tale, a variation of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” she chooses Rory to help, and secrets are revealed. The pace picks up at this point, with giants, baby dragons, and the Snow Queen in her Glass Mountain prison. While the story lags occasionally, particularly the overly long denouement, the book succeeds overall. Full of action, humor, realistic school dynamics, and plenty of opportunity for future books, this one should be popular. Pair with Marissa Burt’s ““Storybound”” (2012).

Only child of divorced celebrities, Rory is not your ordinary sixth-grader. She’s had plenty of experience with after-school programs in the many different places she’s lived. Nor is Ever After School your ordinary day care center. The children and grandchildren of fairy-tale characters, EASers are Characters-in-training, likely to be part of each other’s tales and certain to be sent on one or more quests of their own. Here, for the first time in years, Rory makes friends who don’t care about her famous parents. Here, she fights a dragon, with a real sword. And when her friend Lena’s first tale turns out to require beanstalk-climbing, Rory’s thrilled to be one of her Companions, even though she’s afraid of heights and even though her least favorite person, Chase Turnleaf, is coming along. Their accidental visit to the Snow Queen in her Glass Mountain prison changes their relationship and sets the stage for a promised sequel. Rory recalls her adventures in a first-person chronological narration that includes plenty of dialogue.

This fast-paced combination of middle school realism and fairy-tale fantasy will appeal particularly to imaginative readers already familiar with traditional tales. (Fantasy. 9-13)

Shelby Bach grew up reading every book she could find and writing stories in battered notebooks. She also rarely came home with a clean shirt and had a lot of accidents that ended with a hunt for Band-Aids. Nowadays, she writes on her laptop rather than in a notebook, but not much else has changed. She is the author of the Ever Afters series, which includes Of Giants and Ice, Of Witches and Wind, Of Sorcery and Snow, and Of Enemies and Endings. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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