I think the reason I picked up Jean Ferris’ Once Upon a Marigold off the library shelf was that the library shelf in question was the Nutmeg shelf, and on the whole, the Nutmeg seems to be pretty good. If you are keen on children’s books, you might check out the list of state Nutmeg equivalents; I imagine it would be interesting to compare the lists one to another.
Anyway, this book is the sort of thing I associate more with Eva Ibbotson; a goofy but surprisingly brutal story riffing off our expectations of fairy tales. Yes, the orphaned (sort-of) boy turns out to be of royal blood, but the princess turns out not to be of royal blood, and who cares anyway? There’s a very sweet troll who wants to be the tooth fairy, in part so that he can gain recognition from the other trolls for his service to humanity, a matter of great prestige for trolls. There’s a curse, and there’s a flying machine, and there’s a wicked queen, and some very very bad jokes. All in all, this is a solid B+ of a book; it’s good, but not great. If you are shopping for a ten-year-old, and the ten-year-old is a voracious reader and likes fantasy/fairy tale stuff, and you have run out of ideas, and you really don’t think that she (or I suppose he) is quite ready for Inkheart, well, this might hit the spot. I suspect it’s more of a library-recommendation thing; I doubt it’s going to be a read-again-and-again sort of thing. It’s certainly not a why-doesn’t-that-kid-grow-old-enough-to-read-this-one kind of book, like, oh, The Hobbit or Eye, Ear, Arm. But how many of those are there?
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.