My Epic Fairy Tale Fail

Gr 4–7—As this sequel to My Very Unfairy Tale Life (Sourcebooks, 2011) opens, Jenny is in the midst of a mermaid battle, trying to convince the warring parties to compromise while dodging the putrid fish they are hurling at each other. This trope of showing mythical creatures to be less lovely and well-mannered than readers expect recurs throughout the novel as Jenny, in her official capacity as an adventurer, visits magical lands to complete assignments handed down from a mysterious committee via a friendly, junk-food-crazy gnome. Although Jenny faces many perils (a troll, a sea monster, a witch, etc.), she usually laughs them off, and readers may have trouble caring about her trials and tribulations when the stakes don't feel that high. Jenny's parents were adventurers, too, and their disappearance seven years earlier is tangled up with their daughter's current quest. This plot device should add emotional weight to the story, but due to the lack of character development, it doesn't. The protagonist is a pleasant enough narrator, but she and her friends are not fully realized enough to evoke much interest. Most readers will want to stick with standbys like Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted (HarperCollins, 1998) or Adam Gidwitz's A Tale Dark and Grim (Dutton, 2010) for their dose of fractured fairy tales.—Gesse Stark-Smith, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR