I should be upfront here and say...Polly Horvath is one of my top five favourite modern children's authors. Her writing is just amazing, her characters vibrant and real. Although there is the occasional phrase I might skip over (usually a swear word), I cannot sing her praises highly enough. I feel like when it comes to children's literature, authors are so keen to either 'make the story gritty and real' or 'pretend everything is going to turn out like a Hallmark movie' that they forget that the perfect genre for children has already been invented: the classic Fairy Tale. And that's what Horvath gives us. Not retelling the old tales, but her own stories in the format of the fairy tale. There is good, and bad, there is moral and virtue and faith and striving and redemption. And this is what children want; they want to know that the adults understand the imperfections of their child-worlds. When I finished the book my 8yo kept telling me how much she had enjoyed it, how the bad person hadn't been empathetic, how the faith in return had been so strong. It was a story that sparked so many conversations and I'm so happy, because I love all of the fairy stories!
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