magic – Page 11 – BookBunnies

Marshmallow reviews The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

Marshmallow loved Soman Chainani’s School for Good and Evil series, and reviewed three of the six books for the book bunnies blog, way back in our first year: Quests for Glory, the fourth book, A Crystal of Time, the fifth book, and One True King, the sixth book. Then a couple weeks ago, she got her paws on a prequel Chainani wrote this year, Rise of the School for Good and Evil, and reviewed it for the blog. After reading it, she decided to reread the very first book, School for Good and Evil, to see how it would hold up. She was not disappointed.

Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you like books about magic, friendship, love, and fairy tales, then this might be the book for you.

Marshmallow’s Summary (with Spoilers): Sophie has waited all her life to be kidnapped by the School Master and be whisked away from her boring, plain life. Sophie lives in the quaint town of Gavaldon, where nothing is magical. Perhaps the only out-of-the-ordinary thing in Gavaldon is the kidnappings. Every four years, two children are kidnapped. One child is beautiful and virtuous; the other, cruel and ugly.

For hundreds of years, no one knew what happened to them, until the children realized something strange. The kids who were taken seemed to find their way into the storybooks. They just showed up years later in the fairy tales, but as fierce witches, beautiful princesses, brave princes, or violent villains.

We learn, as events unfold for the main characters of the book, that these children go to a school, specifically the School for Good and Evil. The kidnapper is the School Master. Villains, witches, warlords, and other Evil creatures are trained at the School for Evil, while princes, princesses, and other Good people are trained at the School for Good.

So in this backdrop, Sophie knows that one day she will be taken to the School for Good. She makes sure to do Good Deeds to show the School Master how good she is and why she should be taken to the School for Good. Sophie knows she will be the perfect princess. On the other hand, everyone in Gavaldon knows that Agatha will be taken as the Evil child. Agatha lives in a house in the middle of a graveyard, with her mother (whom everyone believes to be a witch), wears only black, and dislikes almost everyone.

Almost everyone. Sophie visits Agatha (as a Good Deed) every day, until the two become friends. Agatha slowly becomes more than just a pawn used to ensure Sophie’s place in the School for Good. While Sophie wishes for grandeur and eternal adoration, Agatha just wants one person who likes her, one person who could care about her “measly soul”.

Then the girls are both kidnapped, and Sophie’s dreams are realized… until she is dropped into the School for Evil, while Agatha is placed in the School for Good. Sophie struggles to get herself into the School for Good, while Agatha struggles to try to get them back to Gavaldon.

Eventually, the School Master tells them that if Sophie proves that she is not a witch, and if Agatha proves that she is not a princess, they can go home. He asks them: what is the one thing that a witch can never have, and a princess cannot live without? The answer: Love. If Sophie can find love, and Agatha can’t, they can go home. Given who they are, their roles seem easy to play.

Only one complication stands in their way: Sophie doesn’t want to go home; she doesn’t want to at all.

Marshmallow is reading The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani. — Marshmallow is reading *The School for Good and Evil* by Soman Chainani.

Marshmallow’s Review: The first thing I should say is that I have read and reread this book so many times, my original copy of the book totally fell apart. For this review, I ended up getting a new copy so I could take pictures with it.

One of the reasons why I like this book so much and find it so interesting that School for Good and Evil isn’t just a different retelling of the familiar fairytales, but a whole new one. I think that this tale does fit into the world of other fairytales, and I really enjoyed reading about the world that Soman Chainani created.

School for Good and Evil, as probably everyone who has heard of it knows, is the first of a series of six. It is more or less self-contained, you could technically stop at the end and be done with it, but why would you? Chainani’s world is fascinating, and the stories get even better as you go deeper into the series.

The series is fantastical, magic, witches, fairytales, all are quite extraordinary. That said, the characters are very realistic. And some of them are very annoying (cough, Sophie,cough). I really enjoyed the way the characters developed throughout the series however. And I really liked how all of the characters had very big flaws in addition to their strengths. It was interesting to see that even fairy tale heroes have problems.

Rereading the book after having just finished Rise of the School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani, all I can say is that if you just read the Rise and are about to embark upon the rest of the series, you are in for an amazing ride. The prequel does not spoil the fun of this first book, though of course it does spoil a little bit of the surprise. It is not a big deal however, either case, you learn about the School, one way or another, and the story works either way.

I am excited that Netflix is developing a series version of the books! Here is the trailer / teaser:

I for one am looking forward to it!

Marshmallow’s Rating: 98%.

Marshmallow rates The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani 98%. — Marshmallow rates *The School for Good and Evil* by Soman Chainani 98%.

Marshmallow reviews Willodeen by Katherine Applegate

Today Marshmallow reviews Willodeen, a 2021 novel by Katherine Applegate.

Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you like books about friendship, magic, or animals, then this might be the book for you.

Marshmallow’s Summary (with Spoilers): Willodeen loves all animals. Every single one, no matter how gross, or scary, or smelly, Willodeen adores them all. Especially the screechers. Screechers are scary animals, beasts that release a disgusting smell when frightened.

Screechers are about the polar opposites of hummingbears, which are the main claim to fame of Perchance, Willodeen’s village. Hummingbears are small with wings and they nest every year in Perchance because of the trees there. Tourists flock to Perchance to see the adorable creatures. Unfortunately, over the years, fewer and fewer hummingbears have graced Perchance, and the townspeople find it harder and harder to make a living. However, no one wants to see screechers, so the city councilors of Perchance put a bounty on screechers. Hunters immediately start to kill screechers, because no one is very rich.

Willodeen loves screechers: she observes them, names them, and likes to watch them. But slowly, the number of screechers dwindles, until the last one is killed by a hunter with a bow and arrow. That’s when something miraculous happens. Willodeen receives a hand-made model of a screecher from her new friend Connor, and the model seems to become a real baby screecher. Willodeen suddenly finds herself with the challenge of feeding, living with, and raising a baby screecher, which is no easy task, especially with the bounty.

Eventually Willodeen finds that the lessening of hummingbears is related to the screechers. Can Willodeen bring the hummingbears back to Perchance?

Marshmallow is reading Willodeen by Katherine Applegate. — Marshmallow is reading *Willodeen* by Katherine Applegate.

Marshmallow’s Review: Willodeen is set in a fantastic setting, with the people using bows and arrows instead of guns. The story is set in a small town called Perchance where magical animals roam. However, despite Perchance’s magical beasts, the author speaks about how the world and nature is changing, and not always for the better. So in some ways, I thought the author was thinking of our world where a lot has been changing.

I found it interesting that the main character and narrator, Willodeen, is very antisocial. After suffering from a terrible tragedy, she interacts very little with other people. Slowly however, she opens up towards new friends. It was neat to witness her opening up and finding other people to trust and love. I kind of wished to know more about her family, too, but that part kind of went too fast.

I liked the magical animals in this book. In the edition I have read, there were illustrations (by Charles Santoso) of some of the events in the book, which I really liked. The small creatures reminded me a bit of Newt Scamander and his love of all magical beasts in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Willodeen was written by Katherine Applegate, who also wrote The One and Only Ivan. I liked that both books showed animals as creatures that think, feel, and need love, as much as humans do. The One and Only Ivan was written completely in the voice of Ivan the gorilla. In Willodeen, there are some chapters where we see events from, I believe, the perspective of the baby screecher. I found that those chapters were interesting to read, because we could see the main human characters from the perspective of an animal.

Marshmallow’s Rating: 90%.

Marshmallow rates Willodeen by Katherine Applegate 90%. — Marshmallow rates *Willodeen* by Katherine Applegate 90%.

Marshmallow reviews The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

Marshmallow has reviewed two books by Kate DiCamillo before: Flora and Ulysses and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Today she reviews a third book of hers, The Magician’s Elephant.

Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you like books about family, animals, or magic, then this might be the book for you.

Marshmallow’s Summary (with Spoilers): Peter Augustus Duchene lives in Baltese with his guardian, an elderly soldier named Vilna Lutz. Vilna Lutz is not particularly bad, but he is extremely obsessed with making Peter into a good soldier. Thus, Vilna Lutz is extremely strict. One day, when Vilna Lutz sends Peter to buy fish and bread, Peter meets a fortune teller. Instead of buying the fish and bread he was supposed to, he uses the money to ask the fortune teller a single question. (Since he is honorable, he decides that he will tell Vilna what he has done, which is very honorable.) Peter knows exactly what he will ask. His little sister, Adele, according to Vilna, was stillborn but Peter has his doubts. When he starts to ask the fortune teller his question, the fortune teller tells him that his sister is still alive. Extremely excited, Peter asks how to find her. The fortune teller mysteriously says, “Follow the elephant.” Puzzled over these words, Peter realizes that this means that Vilna or the fortune teller is lying, which shakes his foundations, because Lutz is a soldier, “good and true”.

Not very far away, a magician is performing at the Bliffendorf Opera House. He intends to summon a bouquet of lilies. Instead, this magician performs his greatest trick yet: he summons an elephant that crashes through the ceiling. This elephant lands on the legs of the woman the magician was trying to present the lilies to. She is crippled from that and the magician is arrested. The elephant is placed in a cage and then later bought by a rich noble woman to be displayed at her house.

The elephant is the talk of the town, and Peter hears about it and believes that it will lead him to his sister, Adele. When Peter questions Vilna about his sister’s supposed death, Vilna admits that she didn’t die. Vilna was a good friend of Peter’s father. Adele was not placed in his care because she was just a newborn when she was orphaned. This makes Peter more determined to find her.

Marshmallow is reading The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo. — Marshmallow is reading *The Magician’s Elephant* by Kate DiCamillo.

Marshmallow’s Review: I think that The Magician’s Elephant is an amazing book. I always enjoy reading Kate DiCamillo’s books; all of her books are touching and elegant. And this one is especially good. I specifically like how DiCamillo goes into the backstories of all the characters and ties them all together at the end.

The Magician’s Elephant is also a great family book. The main message is simple and perhaps not surprising: even during hard times, family should stick together. But the way DiCamillo tells the story makes all the difference. I listened to this book with my family as an audiobook, besides reading the paper version, too. In both versions, I really enjoyed reading this book. All in all, I think it is a necessary addition to the library of anyone who likes reading children’s literature.

Kate DiCamillo also inserts a bit of a magical touch into this book. The summoning of the elephant and the fortuneteller’s ability to see are both interesting additions of inserting magic into an otherwise realistic storyline, and they make up a major part of this book. All together these make The Magician’s Elephant a touching book that is both realistic and magical, somewhere between fairy tales and realistic fiction.

The version of the book I read was illustrated by Yoko Tanaka. Tanaka’s full-page illustrations were black and white and simple, but contributed to the general magical atmosphere of the story.

I will read this book again.

Marshmallow’s Rating: 100%.

Marshmallow rates The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo 100%. — Marshmallow rates *The Magician’s Elephant* by Kate DiCamillo 100%.

Marshmallow reviews Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander by J.K. Rowling

Marshmallow’s first review for this blog was a review of Harry Potter and The Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling. In her last review for 2021, she revisits the Harry Potter universe and writes about Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander written by J.K. Rowling.

Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you liked some of J.K. Rowling’s other books, then this might be the book for you.

Marshmallow’s Summary: This is a book about all of the fantastic beasts that inhabit the world of Harry Potter. There is an A-Z list of a lot of the amazing creatures in the Harry Potter world, though not all of them were mentioned in the original series. The A-Z list has a paragraph about each creature. There is a rating of how dangerous the creature is, with X meaning “boring” and XXXXX meaning “a known wizard killer / impossible to train or domesticate”. Each creature’s paragraph describes what they look like, where they live, and then some more. Sometimes there is a sketch of the animal.

The purported author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Newt Scamander, is a wizard who appeared in several movies based in the American Wizarding World. Newt Scamander is a wizard from the 1920s, so the book is written from the perspective of a wizard. We first hear about this book in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, where it is a textbook Harry needs. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them also contains an About The Author segment where we learn more about Scamander.

The foreword is written as if it were meant for wizards, and at the beginning Scamander writes, “To appear only in ‘For Wizards’ version” and at the end, there is another handwritten note: “Editor’s note: for Muggles edition, usual guff: ‘obvious fiction—all good fun—nothing to worry about—hope you enjoy it’”

The foreword and the introduction are not something to skip; they are funny and explain the definition and origin of the label of beast. They explain the format of the book too. The author’s note also explains how wizards have kept the magical creatures in the Harry Potter world hidden. The book itself divulges the truth about the Yeti, the Loch Ness monster, and more.

Marshmallow is reading Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander by J.K. Rowling. — Marshmallow is reading *Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them* by Newt Scamander by J.K. Rowling.

Marshmallow’s Review: This book is a must-read for every Harry Potter fan. It is a light read, and doesn’t have a plot, so bunnies of all ages can read it. The author, Newt Scamander/J.K. Rowling, is humorous all throughout, which makes the book fun to read.

On the back of the edition I have it reads:

“Proceeds from the sale of this book will go to Comic Relief and Lumos, which means that the dollars you exchange for it will do magic beyond the powers of any wizard. If you feel that this is insufficient reason to part with your money, one can only hope that passing wizards feel more charitable if they see you being attacked by a Manticore.”

I really enjoyed reading this book. It made watching the movies a lot more fun. Here is the trailer of the first movie in the Fantastic Beasts franchise:

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Official Teaser Trailer #1 (2016) – from YouTube.

Here is the trailer for the second movie:

FANTASTIC BEASTS 2 Trailer 2 (2018) – from YouTube.

The third movie will come out in April 2022, but I will be back here in February. Till then, enjoy the holidays and the new year, and read lots of books! I know I will!

Marshmallow’s Rating: 100%.

Marshmallow rates Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander by J.K. Rowling 100%. — Marshmallow rates *Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them* by Newt Scamander by J.K. Rowling 100%.