The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in A Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M Valente

Genre: children's fantasy-- illustrated
Pages: 247 (hardcover)
Published: May 2011 by Feiwel & Friends
Recommended for: just about anyone up for a whimsical and fantastical tale, beautifully illustrated and marvelously told

Synopsis:
Twelve-year-old September lives in Omaha, and used to have an ordinary life, until her father went to war and her mother went to work. One day, September is met at her kitchen window by a Green Wind (taking the form of a gentleman in a green jacket), who invites her on an adventure, implying that her help is needed in Fairyland. The new Marquess is unpredictable and fickle, and also not much older than September. 


Only September can retrieve a talisman the Marquess wants from the enchanted woods, and if she doesn’t . . . then the Marquess will make life impossible for the inhabitants of Fairyland. September is already making new friends, including a book-loving Wyvern and a mysterious boy named Saturday.  With exquisite illustrations by acclaimed artist Ana Juan, Fairyland lives up to the sensation it created when the author first posted it online. For readers of all ages who love the charm of Alice in Wonderland and the soul of The Golden Compass, here is a reading experience unto itself: unforgettable, and so very beautiful.

My Take:

This is the first book I've ever bought solely because the book trailer was so darn catchy!  I found myself watching the pencil animations and humming that little song over and over again.  (Click here for the trailer, if you want to get it stuck in your head, too.)  I was expecting The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland to be a modern Alice in Wonderland-esque adventure, and in many ways it was.  There was a little less of the sheer, merry madness of Lewis Carroll's classic, and a bit more colorful quirkiness.  The illustrations and the packaging of the book are just superb.  I can't imagine any child-- or any adult, for that matter-- not wanting to immediately pick up this book and flip through its pages on sight.

Valente's Fairyland is a very different one from the one visited in urban fantasies, even though September's journey begins in Omaha, Nebraska.  It is kind of reminiscent of Never-land: a place where Longitude and Latitude tower over a Fairyland city and autumn reigns eternal over a mythic forest where alchemists dwell and dance.  The most lovable character is A-Through-L (or simply L) is a Wyvernary, a young wyvern (not a dragon) and September's dear companion, who spent his childhood soaring around a library, whom he is certain is his father.  Little bits of wisdom and cleverness shimmer on every page, and the magical goings-on are never what you expect they might be.  September is wonderful: a combination of Narnia's adventurous and curious Lucy and the more headstrong, fierce Lyra from The Golden Compass.  For a twelve year old girl from Omaha, she definitely has a lot of mettle... and as it turns out, it does not hurt that she was born on a Tuesday and manages to befriend a certain devoted key. The villain of the piece is the Marquess of Fairyland: an all-powerful and terrible young lady, albeit with a really superb hat, who sends September on a seemingly impossible quest.  In September's Fairyland there are horrors as well as bizarre wonders.  The book tells of an orchestra of stolen children in glittering shoes, a mysterious caged boy who sees the future and the past and can grant you a wish only if his life is in grave danger, a suspicious shadow, the charitable, capricious Green Wind and his leopard... everything is as entrancing as it is strange, and certainly memorable.

I really have no complaints or pet peeves about this book what so ever.  It is sweet, adorable, clever, surprising, satisfying, and altogether marvelous.  I most certainly recommend it, and cannot wait to see if Catherynne Valente will continue September's adventures in a forthcoming volume.

All-around Rating: 5/5  

The Replacement

THE REPLACEMENT, BY BRENNA YOVANOFF published September 2010 OVERALL RATING: 4/5

Synopsis: Mackie Doyle is just an ordinary teenager with ordinary dreams-- get hot head cheerleader Alice Harm to notice him and play bass guitar.  Except that he isn't.  He lives in the small town of Gentry, a prosperous and pleasant town where nothing bad ever happens.  Except that it isn't-- that's the lie They want you to believe.  Gentry is a town of eerie walking corpses and unconsecrated graves, a place where children are stolen from their cribs and the local band is far more sinister without their crazy stage make-up.  There's a whole world beneath the Gentry slap heaps, a world of 'tunnels and black murky water, a world of living dead girls ruled by a tattooed little princess' (Book jacket)  A world called Mayhem.  It's where Mackie Doyle comes from, the world where the real Mackie Doyle was stolen away to as a baby and sacrificed to a bloodthirsty witch, the embodiment of Terror herself.  Mackie has lived in Gentry with his 'adoptive' family for sixteen long years and he is slowly dying, wasting away beneath the suffocating iron of the human world.  He might be dead already, if not for his sister Emma, who nursed him back to health again and again though she knew this Mackie is not her brother.  He is the Replacement, one of the People beneath the slag heaps. 

Mackie has spent his whole life denying the truth he sees in the mirror: in his black eyes and terrible allergies to blood and the consecrated ground of the church.  But when an extremely irritating and yet very intriguing girl at his high school, Tate, loses her sister to the same sinister race that left Mackie in the baby's crib, Mackie and his friends are forced to confront the truth.  Because there's definitely something rotten going down beneath Gentry.  Evil plots and age-old battles being waged beneath the grime of the slag heaps.  And if Mackie and Tate want to rescue her sister before All Souls' Night, when she is to be sacrificed to pay an ancient toll, they're going to have to descend into Mayhem and outsmart the immortal and inhuman residents of a town most unlike their own. 

I bought The Replacement for two reasons: because faerie and dark faerie stories are some of my favorites, and because of the cover.  It's beautiful and intriguing, capturing both the sinister nature of the story and the dark beauty of Brenna Yovanoff's writing.  The cover features a quote from Maggie Stiefvater (author of Shiver and the Faerie Queen's Lament, etc): "I loved this eerie and beautiful story of ugly things.  It should be read aloud after dark, at a whisper."  No one could have said it better-- The Replacement is eerie and hauntingly lovely, surprising and a touch disturbing.  It is a horror story, and a dark faerie tale which reminded me somewhat of Holly Black's Modern Faerie Tale books. 
Mackie Doyle is definitely one of the more complex and intriguing protagonists I've read about recently.  He is at once a relatively normal teenage guy mostly concerned with girls and friends and a boy who feels like a stranger in the world around him.  Most people feel like that at least sometimes, and this is where The Replacement reveals itself to be truly deeper than the cover synopsis.  It is not just a book about a scary faerie race who steal away children, but also a story about finding where you belong, and who you are.  At times the book can be gory and haunting, but it is several cuts above most YA novels dealing with the supernatural.  I particularly liked Roswell, Mackie's best friend, and, of course, Tate.  She is as capricious and daring as the Mayhem people themselves, and possibly still more vicious when it comes to defending her friends and family.  Her determination to save her sister is powerful and utterly convincing.  The romance between Mackie and Tate is perfectly played out and never feels like an idealist Bella/Edward kind of relationship.  I'm really looking forward to reading more books by Brenna Yovanoff and hoping that they will be as brilliant as this entrancing debut novel!  The Replacement is also rare in that it's a book which can be enjoyed equally by girl and guy readers.  Amazing all the way; creepy enough to make you think twice about who or what you might encounter while walking home alone after dark.
Watch the awesome book trailer for The Replacement from Youtube...

d15db692-f944-4385-8aa9-e8475962ecd5

1.03.01