Rapunzel's Revenge

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hale, Shannon and Hale, Dean (authors) and Hale, Nathan (illustrator). RAPUNZEL’S REVENGE. 2008. New York: Bloomsbury USA Children's Books. ISBN: 9781599900704.

2. PLOT SUMMARY

In RAPUNZEL’S REVENGE, authors Shannon and Dean Hale retell the story of long-haired Rapunzel, but with a more modern and humorous twist. At the beginning, Rapunzel leads a secluded life in a grand villa surrounded by a towering wall. Her only companions are loyal servants and Gothel, whom she believes is her mother and possesses the power of “growth magic.” On Rapunzel’s twelfth birthday, she finally scales the mysterious wall and is stunned to discover the truth about the family she’s lost, Gothel’s identity, and the desolation of the land that spreads beyond her home. Soon after, Rapunzel is banished by Gothel to “a creepy tree,” but is eventually able to escape by using her long, red hair as a lasso. She then meets Jack, a funny and mysterious outlaw who helps Rapunzel find her way back to Gothel. With the use of their wits and Rapunzel’s skillful handling of her braided hair, Rapunzel and Jack seek justice for Gothel’s wicked deeds, save Rapunzel’s true mother, and discover their love for one another.

3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS

In the graphic novel RAPUNZEL’S REVENGE, authors Shannon and Dean Hale create a thrilling and unconventional retelling of the Rapunzel fairy tale. At the beginning of the story, Rapunzel reveals how she discovered the wickedness and deceit of villainous Gothel, whom she had been tricked to believe was her mother. When Gothel banishes Rapunzel to live within the hollow of a giant tree, Rapunzel manages to escape the prison by using her long locks. In her quest for vengeance, Rapunzel meets Jack, an outlaw with a sketchy past. Together they forge a friendship that eventually leads to trust and love. Unlike traditional Rapunzel fairy tails, this story is set in the Wild West, incorporating outlaws, gunfights, and rugged terrain.

Throughout the novel, Shannon and Dean Hale use amusing prose and dialogue, mixed with both sarcasm and wit. When one of Gothel’s henchman leaves Rapunzel in the towering tree, she explains that “I hoped he might come right back, that it was just a joke. But for all I knew, he’d been eaten by a wild boar in the forest. A girl can dream…” Chapter titles further add to the humorous story, including “Rustling Up Some Grub” and “The Shindig.”

Illustrator Nathan Hale masterfully shows the emotions of Rapunzel, such as her astonishment when she discovers the barren land that lies beyond the confines of her villa, her sadness when she meets her true mother for the first time, and her fierceness when she battles wild coyotes with the whip of her braids. Nathan Hale also cleverly uses sepia-toned pictures to cue readers to events that happened in the past, such as Rapunzel’s flashback of being torn from mother’s arms by Gothel, and the back-story of how Gothel gained her “growth magic.” Throughout the graphic novel, Hale’s dramatic and vivid drawings will captivate readers as they are whisked through Rapunzel’s journey, including her early years in the lavish grand villa, Gothel’s horrid mine camps, Jack and Rapunzel’s stay at Pig Tree Gulch, and Rapunzel’s battle with a vicious serpent.

Readers will thoroughly enjoy Rapunzel’s evolution to a strong, self-sufficient heroine who is determined to bring justice to the witch who separated Rapunzel from her birth mother. The classic fairy tale theme of good versus evil and a happy ending will feel familiar to readers, but the action-packed scenes, clever writing, and a southwestern flare will be an exciting surprise. Both boys and girls are sure to be entertained by RAPUNZEL’S REVENGE and eager to revisit the pages again and again.


4. AWARDS WON AND REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

• Booklist: “Hale’s art matches the story well, yielding expressive characters and lending a wonderful sense of place to the fantasy landscape. Rich with humor and excitement, this is an alternate version of a classic that will become a fast favorite of young readers.”
  
  
• Kirkus Reviews: “A dash of typical fairy-tale romance, a strong sense of social justice and a spunky heroine make this a standout choice for younger teens.”
  
  
• School Library Journal (starred review): “This is the tale as you've never seen it before…The dialogue is witty, the story is an enticing departure from the original, and the illustrations are magically fun and expressive. Knowing that there are more graphic novels to come from this writing team brings readers their own happily-ever-after.”
  
  
• VOYA: “The Hale team creates an engaging heroine…This novel presents entertaining girl power at its quirkiest.
  
  

5. CONNECTIONS

• Recommended for children ages 10 and up.
  
  
• Children may be interested in exploring other tales of Rapunzel, such as:
  -A traditional tale: Zelinsky, Paul O. (adapter, illustrator) and Brothers Grimm (author). RAPUNZEL. 1997. New York: Dutton Juvenile. ISBN: 9780525456070. (Caldecott Medal Book)
  -A humorous tale: Wilcox, Leah (author) and Monks, Lydia (illustrator) FALLING FOR RAPUNZEL. 2003. New York: Penguin Group (USA). ISBN: 9780399237942.
  -A Caribbean retelling: Storace, Patricia (author) and Colon, Raul (illustrator). SUGAR CANE: A CARIBBEAN RAPUNZEL. 2007. New York: Hyperion Books for Children. ISBN: 9780786807918.
  
  
• Children may be interested to read other books by Newbery Honor winning author Shannon Hale, including:
  -Hale, Shannon. PRINCESS ACADEMY. 2005. New York: Bloomsbury USA. ISBN: 9781582349930. (Newbery Honor book)
  -The Books of Bayern Series:
  -Hale, Shannon. THE GOOSE GIRL. 2003. New York: Bloomsbury USA. ISBN: 9781582348438
  -Hale, Shannon. ENNA BURNING. 2004. New York: Bloomsbury USA. ISBN: 9781582348896.
  -Hale, Shannon. RIVER SECRETS. 2006. New York: Bloomsbury USA. ISBN: 9781582349015.
  
  
• To learn more about Shannon Hale, visit her Web site: www.shannonhale.com
  
  
• Children may be interested in other books authored and illustrated by Nathan Hale, including:
  -Hale, Nathan (author and illustrator). THE DEVIL YOU KNOW. 2010. New York: Walker & Company. ISBN: 9781616805388.
  -Hale, Nathan (author and illustrator). YELLOWBELLY AND PLUM GO TO SCHOOL. 2007. New York: Penguin Group (USA). ISBN: 9780399246241.
  
  
• To learn more about Nathan Hale, visit his Web site at: www.spacestationnathan.com
  

How I Live Now

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rosoff, Meg. HOW I LIVE NOW. 2004. New York: Wendy Lamb Books. ISBN: 9780553376050.

2. PLOT SUMMARY

In Meg Rosoff’s, HOW I LIVE NOW, fifteen-year-old Daisy has a turbulent relationship with her father and pregnant stepmother. She is sent from her home in New York City to live with her aunt and teen cousins Edmond, Isaac, and Osmond, as well as their nine-year-old sister Piper at their farmhouse in the English countryside. Upon arrival to her aunt’s home, Daisy, who also struggles with an eating disorder, surprisingly feels that she “belonged to this house for centuries.” Daisy and her cousins often find themselves living alone, since Aunt Penn travels abroad. The cousins forge a bond—at times familial, amorous, and mystical. However, their carefree days abruptly come to an end when an unnamed enemy invades England. Daisy and Piper are forced to separate from the others and leave the safety of their home. Then begins Daisy’s struggle to survive in the countryside, desperate to find and rejoin her cousins, especially Edmond with whom she has fallen in love.

3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS

In the 2005 Michael A. Printz Award winning novel, HOW I LIVE NOW, author Meg Rosoff creates a gripping tale of teens becoming embroiled in World War III on the shores of a slightly futuristic England. Readers are told the story through the eyes of Daisy, a fifteen-year-old girl grappling with discovering who she is and where she belongs. Rosoff depicts Daisy as being insightful, sarcastic, and vulnerable. Over the course of the novel, Daisy evolves from a narcissistic teen to a survivor who is determined to save her cousins from harm.

Rosoff writes vivid descriptions of the characters, their actions, and the English countryside. For example, this is shown when Daisy describes her first encounter with Edmond: “…hair that looked like he cut it himself with a hatchet in the dead of night…he’s exactly like some kind of mutt…the ones you see at the dog shelter who are kind of hopeful and sweet and put their nose straight into your hand.” Daisy’s cousins also have the eerie ability to read minds. However, Rosoff is careful not to make the novel feel like science fiction, and instead the telepathy only emphasizes the uncommon bond that the cousins feel for one another.

While much of the plot seems plausible, Rosoff neglects to elaborate on some details that readers may want answered. Who are the hostile invaders infiltrating England? How do telephone and television communications become so widely disrupted? Why do English forces feel it necessary to split up the cousins? However, readers will be riveted to follow Daisy as she shares her coming of age story—discovering a place where she finally feels she truly belongs, finding her first love, and doggedly surviving in the wilderness when the world is crumbling around her. Rosoff does well to show how scared and defenseless Daisy feels as she tries to safely lead her young cousin Piper through the countryside, out of sight of hostile forces and in search for her other cousins. “For some stupid reason I started to cry then and I felt completely choked with despair and worthlessness and I couldn’t believe I was trying to lead Piper miles across England to find something the side of a microbe on a map when in my real life I couldn’t even find a clean pair of underpants in a chest of drawers.”

While the novel is written as Daisy’s stream of consciousness, long, run-on sentences are often cumbersome to read. Rosoff also seems to throw out grammatical rules—eliminating the traditional use of dialogue and instead prose and conversation are strung together. Readers may appreciate this somewhat creative way of telling the story, but it may also be distracting to some.

Many readers will have a hard time putting this novel down and will want to discover what becomes of Daisy and her cousins. However, some readers may be disturbed by some of the events that occur in the novel, including an intimacy that develops between Daisy and Edmond, and violent actions taken by the occupiers. During the last few chapters, Rosoff takes readers six years into the future and provides some insight on how the global conflict has impacted the cousins. While readers are taken on a rollercoaster ride of emotions, with elements of the story being funny, sad, troubling, and exciting, the novel ends with Daisy finding peace within herself and hopeful for new beginnings.

4. AWARDS WON AND REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

• Publisher’s Weekly: "This riveting first novel paints a frighteningly realistic picture of a world war breaking out in the 21st century…Like the heroine, readers will emerge from the rubble much shaken, a little wiser and with perhaps a greater sense of humanity."
  
  
• School Library Journal: “Daisy's voice is uneven, being at times teenage vapid, while elsewhere sporting a vocabulary rich with 50-cent words, phrases, and references. Rosoff barely scratches the surface of the material at hand. At times, this is both intentional and effective … but for the most part the dearth of explanation creates insurmountable questions around the basic mechanisms of the plot.”
  
  
• Kirkus Reviews: “This is a very relatable contemporary story, told in honest, raw first-person and filled with humor, love, pathos, and carnage.”
  
  
• 2005 Winner of Michael L. Printz Award
  
  
• 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize
  

5. CONNECTIONS

• Recommended for young adult readers ages 14 and up.
  
  
• Other YA fiction novels of dystopia that may be of interest to readers include:
  -Collins, Suzanne. THE HUNGER GAMES. 2008. New York: Scholastic, Inc. ISBN: 9780439023481.
  -Dashner, James. THE MAZE RUNNER. 2009. New York: Delacorte Books for Young Readers. ISBN: 9780385737944.
  -Grant, Michael. GONE. 2008. Katherine Tegen Books. ISBN: 9780061448768
  -Haddix, Margaret Peterson. AMONG THE HIDDEN. 1998. New York: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing. ISBN: 9780689817007 (first book of the Shadow Children Sequence).
  -Lowry, Lois. THE GIVER. 1993. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN: 9780395645666 (first book of a trilogy).
  
  
• To learn more about author Meg Rosoff, visit her Web site at: http://www.megrosoff.co.uk/
  
  
• Other fiction books by Meg Rosoff include:
  -Rosoff, Meg. JUST IN CASE. 2008. New York: Penguin Group (USA). ISBN: 9780452289376.
  -Rosoff, Meg. WHAT I WAS. 2008. New York: Penguin Group (USA). ISBN: 9780452290235
  -Rosoff, Meg. THE BRIDE’S FAREWELL. 2009. New York: Penguin Group (USA). ISBN: 9780670020997.
  

When You Reach Me

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Stead, Rebecca. WHEN YOU REACH ME. 2009. New York: Wendy Lamb Books. ISBN: 9780385737425.

2. PLOT SUMMARY

In Rebecca Stead’s WHEN YOU REACH ME, sixth grader Miranda is a latchkey kid who lives with her mother in New York City. In an apartment in the same building lives Sal, who has been Miranda’s best friend her entire life. Miranda explains: “I used to think of Sal as being a part of me: Sal and Miranda, Miranda and Sal.” However, after an incident with a mysterious boy on the way home from school, Sal first stops walking home from school with Miranda and then hardly spends any time with her at all. Miranda must adjust to Sal’s sudden distance, and gradually makes new friends. Meanwhile, the story takes a supernatural turn, when letters start to arrive predicting events before they happen. As Miranda helps her mother prepare to be a contestant on the popular television game show $20,0000 Pyramid, she must solve the great mystery of what happened to her friendship with Sal, why a homeless man loiters under the mailbox at the corner of her block, and who has written the mysterious letters.


3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS

In the 2010 Newbery Award winning WHEN YOU REACH ME, author Rebecca Stead masterfully writes a tale that incorporates a little bit of everything—mystery, science fiction, adventure, and realism. Readers travel through time as the story unravels and answers to questions become apparent. Stead tells the story from Miranda’s perspective, including her worry and confusion over the mysterious notes she keeps receiving. As Miranda explains “I check the box under my bed, which is where I’ve kept your notes these past few months. There it is, in your tiny handwriting: April 27th: Studio TV-15, the words all jerky-looking, like you wrote them on the subway. Your last ‘proof.’”

Readers will relate to twelve-year-old Miranda who has a strong relationship with her single mother and her mother’s boyfriend, Richard. Stead skillfully portrays an easy and natural relationship between mother and daughter—whether it be Miranda teasing her mother about a wacky outfit or how they routinely practice questions for her mother’s upcoming appearance on the popular 1970s game show $20,000 Pyramid. Stead also takes great care to describe the realistic worries of the pre-teen main character, whether it be her embarrassment over her apartment’s condition when a wealthy girl from her school comes to visit or her feelings toward a boy she makes sandwiches with at a local shop.

Humorous elements appear throughout the story, such as when Miranda explains that: “I was named for a criminal. Mom says that’s a dramatic way of looking at things, but sometimes the truth is dramatic.” Chapter titles also draw in readers and carry the story along, such as “Mom’s Rules for Life in New York City” or the “Things” chapters, including “Things You Don’t Forget”, “Things You Push Away”, and “Things You Realize. ” Stead also subtly incorporates aspects of the 1970s, such as aspects of the popular TV game show or that Miranda’s mother won’t buy grapes “because Mom doesn’t like the way grape farmers are treated in California.”

While the time travel aspect of the plot could be confusing to some readers, most will be riveted as they try to make sense of how all the pieces to the puzzle fit together—who is “the laughing man” who shakes his fist at the sky, kicks his legs toward the street, and sleeps under the mailbox? Why did the strange boy punch Miranda’s best friend Sal on their way home from school? When and where will Miranda receive another strange note that somehow proves that an event will eventually happen? Readers will be eager to discover how all of the events and characters become intertwined at the end of the story. Sure to become a classic, booklovers will want to revisit Stead’s tale again and again.


4. AWARDS WON AND REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

• School Library Journal (starred review): This unusual, thought-provoking mystery will appeal to several types of readers.
  
  
• Kirkus Reviews (starred review): "[T]een readers will circle back to the beginning and say, ‘Wow...cool.’”
  
  
• Booklist (starred review): "[Q]uite wonderful … [j]ust as Miranda rereads L’Engle, children will return to this."
  
  
• Horn Book (starred review): "Closing revelations are startling and satisfying, but quietly made."
  
  
• The New York Times Book Review: "Every word, every sentence, has meaning and substance ... [in this] smart and mesmerizing book."
  
  
• 2010 Newbery Medal Winner
  
  

5. CONNECTIONS

• Recommended for children ages 10 and up. Adults will love it too!
  
  
• To learn more about author Rebecca Stead, visit her Web site at: http://www.rebeccasteadbooks.com/
  
  
• To listen to an audio interview of Rebecca Stead discussing WHEN YOU REACH ME, visit: http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/whenyoureachme/interview.html
  
  
• Children may also enjoy reading Rebecca Stead’s other fiction book:
  -Stead, Rebecca. FIRST LIGHT. 2007. New York: Wendy Lamb Books. ISBN: 9780375840173.
  
  
• Children may also enjoy reading A WRINKLE IN TIME, which is mentioned in the book:
  -L’Engle, Madeleine. A WRINKLE IN TIME. 2007. New York: Square Fish. ISBN: 9780312367541. (Published in 1962 and winner of the 1963 Newbery Medal)