Wishes Fulfilled: New Books — Bigger Than a Bread Box

Courtesy Random House

Bigger Than a Bread Box by Laurel Snyder

I’ve made it pretty clear on this blog how much I enjoy magical realism. But my affection for lovely, entertaining, suspenseful, and moving Bigger Than a Bread Box goes far beyond the presence of a wish-granting bread tin. What really made me love Laurel Snyder’s new book so much is its protagonist.

            Twelve-year-old Rebecca is a eminently realistic tween girl — flawed and likable. She gets bored by Civil War documentaries, she gets frustrated by her little brother who she really loves very much, she shares laughs with her best friend by sneaking peeks at dirty greeting cards (just one of the wonderful little details in the book). Everything she does is believable. Which is why, reading about her from a parent’s perspective, I so often felt like I wanted to be there to comfort her through her angst — or warn her against the ill-thought, disaster-bound choices she was obviously making. Kids are so much more interesting to read about when they make mistakes.

           

            In the story, Rebecca’s parents split up and she is forced to move with her mother into her grandma’s house. Adjusting to a new house, new school, new neighborhood, and new friends is just as difficult as you’d imagine. But it’s made a little easier (or at least more surprising) by Rebecca’s discovery of a magical old bread box. Whatever she wishes for appears from within its tin confines. She starts off by wishing for exactly the type of things you’d expect a kid to wish for: money, an iPod, macaroni and cheese. But when her newfound loot doesn’t immediately change her life for the better, she ups the stakes, wishing for more unexpected (and harder to explain) prizes. And of course, the one thing she wants most — a reunion for her parents — is not something that can appear in a bread box. And when she learns a dark and morally challenging secret about the bread box, the tension increases exponentially.

            This is a tale of dangerous magic, the kind that looks incredibly promising and appealing, but which — if misused — can lead to ruin. Be-careful-what-you-wish-for predicaments start snowballing. And you, the reader, want so badly for things to work out for this girl, that you can’t help but be drawn in.

Best for: Lovers of magical realism; readers looking for tween drama with a unique twist; collectors of antique bread boxes

A Fairy Tale of Tween Angst: New Books — Breadcrumbs

Courtesy HarperCollins

Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu

If you’ve read any of my previous book reviews, you may have figured out that I’m a sucker for magical realism (I’m also a sucker for magical magic, but that’s beside the point). I love when I find a story that works so brilliantly as a subtle, slice-of-life drama that you don’t blink an eye at the fantastical and otherworldly elements sprinkled throughout. I have seen the excellent Breadcrumbs (which has already received many much-deserved lauds) described as a modern retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” — and it is — but there’s so much more going on here than just “let’s set an old fairy tale in modern times.”

Breadcrumbs is about childhood friendships — how solid and unchangeable they can seem, how strangely fickle and malleable they can be, and how utterly important they are either way. It’s about the way friendships, especially at that age, help us form a view of ourselves and our world. And the story just happens to have a child-stealing witch in it. And a mystical forest, and a magic mirror. But those Hans Christian Andersonian bits aren’t the story; they just help tell the story. And wonderfully so. After all, your tween years are such a surreal mishmash of hormones, emotions, pressures, and changes that it often feels like you’re roaming through an alternate universe half the time anyway.  In that sense, Breadcrumbs feels like a better bookshelf companion for Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me (another masterful piece of magical realism, or more appropriately, sci-fi realism) than anything by, say, Gregory Maguire (whose work is wonderful in a very different way).

To tell her sad and lovely story of friendship, Ursu makes genius use of not only “The Snow Queen,” but an anthology’s worth of other Andersen tales. I don’t want to spoil too much, but as ten-year-old Hazel treks through the dark and danger-filled woods in search of her missing former best friend, she runs into one Andersen character after another — and grows in some way with each encounter. My daughter is just about Hazel’s age and I can’t wait to pass Breadcrumbs on to her. But I’m going to have her read up on her Andersen first. Getting the references only adds to experience.

Best for: Tweens going through rough patches (or anybody who remembers being one); Hans Christian Andersen fans who have been longing to see any of his stories other than "The Little Mermaid" get its due; readers who enjoy their fantasy adventures with more brainwork than fisticuffs or swordplay