Never in Doubt

Sally Gardner

Like Roald Dahl, Sally Gardner writes of adult cruelty to children in such a way that the child's welfare is never in doubt in Operation Bunny: The First Case, illustrated by David Roberts, the launch title in the Wings & Co. series.

Emily Vole is a resourceful, smart child with survivor instincts, and there's no question of her innate goodness. She wants to escape from the laundry room of her adoptive household safely, and leave her neglectful adoptive parents, the Dashwoods, behind. Like Harry Potter, Emily discovers that she has a higher calling. She's the Keeper of the Keys, with the ability to restore the fairy world--if she can outwit Harpella, a witch with a vengeance for fairies.

Emily does not seek revenge on her cruel adoptive parents, but rather, acknowledging Mrs. Dashwood's blindness to her triplet daughters' evil ways and the woman's myopic efforts to restore them to their previous horrid personalities (after Harpella steals their souls), Emily incorporates Mrs. Dashwood's unique traits in her plot to overthrow the witch Harpella. Indeed the battle between the two women (each a witch in her own way) is one of the funniest scenes of the novel. Gardner cloaks her conflicts in humor, so they never feel that threatening, and David Roberts's comical drawings emphasize the Vaudevillian air.

The author taps into the secret desire many readers have to believe that magic exists in our everyday world, and her fairy characters offer credence to that desire. They are running the police department and solving mysteries, and residing with cats. Her book has the classic underpinnings of a fairy tale, but with original plot twists and large doses of humor. Best of all, Emily's ultimate triumph over evil is never in doubt.

A Dose of Reality in a World of Magic

I used to think I was not a fan of fantasy books. I now know that’s not true. I just hadn’t read the right ones yet. The fantasies that draw me in are stories in which tightly constructed worlds that seem on the surface to be completely unlike my own cause me to think about my own world differently.

What would it be like to wake up one day and realize you were truly gifted in some way you’d never imagined? That premise could apply to any number of fantasy books (Harry Potter, Graceling by Kristin Cashore, Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief ). The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Angela Barrett, however, puts a slightly different twist on this idea: a magical being is rendered rather ordinary, because she cannot use her wings after a bat accidentally crumples them. Flory must figure out how to get from here to there, find shelter from her predators, gather food one cherry at a time because that’s all she can hold. And she must do all these things without her wings.

For Flory, now nearly everything in Nature poses a threat. She is, understandably, angry. Things are not going the way they were supposed to go. And yet she figures out how to take care of herself in this new predicament. She grows accustomed to her new routine. She begins to accept her situation as it is. And that turns things around for Flory. She opens up to the possibilities around her, for friendship and forgiveness and flights on hummingbird wings. This is the paradox: as Flory begins to accept her new reality and the world the way it is, she also sees a world of opportunities in front of her.