Title: Into the Wild
Author: Sarah Beth Durst
Summary: Living in a fairy tale isn’t ‘happily ever after.’ When the story ends, it just starts all over again. Julie knows just how different her life is from most teenagers. She has grown up listening to the stories her mom, Rapunzel, has told about how the fairy tale characters banded together to defeat ‘the Wild,’ the land of fairy tales that forced them to relive the same moments for hundreds of years. The Wild lives under Julie’s bed: A mess of branches and leaves that is constantly stealing her shoes. It is her job to make sure it doesn’t escape.
When the Wild accidentally gets loose and begins to spread, trapping Cinderella, the witch, Red Riding Hood and all her family’s friends inside, Julie and her adopted brother, Puss and Boots, must go into the sinister forest to rescue them, keep from being captured in a story themselves, and prevent the Wild from turning the world into a never-ending fairy tale gone bad.
Who will like this book?: Fans of fractured fairy tales, or stories about when fantasy takes over the real world. People looking for adventure books starring girls.
If you like this, try this: The sequel, Out of the Wild. Books by Gregory Maguire, including his latest, What-the-Dickens. Dave Barry’s Peter series.
Recommended by: Nicole, Teen Librarian