The School for Good and Evil

The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When best friends Sophie and Agatha are kidnapped and forced onto opposite sides of a School dedicated to churning out fairy tale villains and heroes, they must stick together to find a way out - or face their true destinies alone.

Beautiful Sophie hates the thought of being ordinary, and is determined to find her way into the fairy tales so she can marry her own handsome prince. In spite of her ceaseless vanity and self-absorption, she manages to befriend the ugly and lonely Agatha.

Soon the unlikely best friends are kidnapped and forced to participate in the bizarre world of the School for Good and Evil, where the mission is to create pure paragons of Good and Evil who will then be remembered in fairy tales.

Except someone makes a mistake: beautiful Sophie is dropped into the Evil side and misfit Agatha placed in the candy-pink side of Good.

While Sophie is forced to study Uglification and Henchmen Training with the Evil, Agatha learns that Good princesses whistle up forest animals, do their hair, and wait for princes to come to the rescue. Impatient with frippery, Agatha only wants to return home with her friend. Pink-loving Sophie, however, longs to switch sides so she can rule the Good - in spite of occasionally showing an unprincesslike aptitude for her Evil lessons.

It's a complex and unexpected book (sometimes overly action-packed) where the line between Good and Evil remains in sight but grows increasingly blurred. The friendship between the two girls is compelling as each struggles with her own goals; sometimes in concert with her counterpart, mostly in opposition.

Sophie's lack of introspection sometimes makes her frustratingly dense, but she is entertaining as an unwitting villainess-in-training. (She's cut along the lines of Galinda the Good in the musical Wicked, and there are other interesting parallels to that story.) Agatha, on the other hand, sees her situation more clearly and is a sympathetic heroine struggling to do Good in spite of loneliness and an inclination to Evil.

Soman Chainani knows his fairy tales, and he gets at the complications of human nature that go beyond simple Good and Evil. It's an entertaining story, as smart as fractured fairy tales books should be. Fans of Catherynne M. Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making will find much to enjoy here. There are flashes of humor, too, that recall The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy. Fans of traditional fairy tales who are interested in the deeper morality should also read George MacDonald's classic The Lost Princess. And don't forget Chainani's upcoming sequel: A World Without Princes!

Quotable:

"Evil thought it had corrupted Good, and Good thought it had enlightened Evil, but it didn't matter." - 270

" 'I was angry!' Sophie cried. 'I didn't mean any - I didn't want to hurt him! I don't want to hurt anyone! I'm not a villain!'
'You see, it doesn't matter what we are, Sophie.'
Lady Lesso leaned so close she just had to whisper.
'It's what we do.' " - 286

The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom

The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Four princes who hate to be called charming start a quest to win fame and honor - and possibly save a kingdom or two.

You know their stories, but it's unlikely that you've heard the names Liam, Duncan, Gustav and Frederic. Probably because you've heard of Briar Rose, Snow White, Rapunzel, and Cinderella instead. Those bards have a lot to answer for - and one irritated witch is determined to make them pay.

The Princes Charming

It all begins when Ella, instead of living her happily ever after with fashion and safety-obsessed Prince Charming (Frederic), goes on a quest to put the excitement back in her sheltered life. Frederic follows soon after, and runs into Prince Charming (Gustav of Rapunzel's story, a hulking warrior with a chip on his shoulder as a result of being the youngest of 16 daring brothers), Prince Charming (Liam, of Sleeping Beauty's story, the perfect hero but a little too in love with the adulation of his subjects), and of course, Prince Charming (Duncan, a sweet weirdo who found his perfect woman in Snow White).

This ill-assembled team stumbles through misadventure, slowly realizing the witch's dastardly schemes and springing to the rescue. Eventually. Going several directions at once. They run into beet-eating trolls, fierce giants, dragons, and one very naughty Bandit King. Along their road they are helped by super-accomplished dwarves, assorted princesses, and a bit of dumb luck. (Very dumb.)

It's an adventure story sure to appeal to fans of fractured fairy tales with plenty of tongue-in-cheek action, and is also the first in The League of Princes novels. Anyone who loves William Goldman's The Princess Bride is sure to be charmed; it may also appeal to fans of the funny Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.

It's beautifully illustrated by artist Todd Harris, who gives appealing faces to our heroic men and women, plus assorted creatures and elements of their fairy tale world.

Quotable:
"All the princes had their issues - Frederic was easily intimidated, Liam's ego could stand to be reined in a bit, and Gustav could use some impulse control - but Duncan was flat-out strange." - 83

"On still another road, a green-haired man wobbled by on peppermint-stick stilts; a fiery-plumed bird of paradise perched on his shoulder. But he's not in this story, so don't pay any attention to him." - 212

Book Trailers

Lately for a class project I've been designing a book trailer for The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, one of my favorite YA novels. Working on it with my project partner has made me appreciate how gorgeous other book trailers are, and how utterly inept I am at original design.

In my hunt for inspiration I ran across this blog post, which has a ton of gorgeous and funny trailers. They're all polished and excellent, so I highly recommend checking it out. Here are a few of my personal favorites from that list, which was created by the Bullit County Public Library staff: