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"A young troll named Hawthorn is stolen from Fairyland by the Golden Wind, and becomes a changeling in our world, a place no less bizarre than Fairyland in his eyes"--Tags
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While I wasn't necessarily expecting this to be the next chronological stage in a linear narrative with the three earlier books of its series, it is. And yet this book is a surprising departure from the earlier ones. It introduces a new protagonist, and makes him a native of Fairyland sojourning in 20th-century Chicago. There is something more exuberant about the prose, and less formulaic about the structure; I definitely preferred it to its immediate predecesssor.
Ultimately, though, this book is a shameless piece of propaganda that will doubtless serve to recruit children into the subversive ranks of otherkin.
As with the others, I read this one aloud to my (now 11-year-old) daughter. She was especially taken with Blunderbuss the Wombat.
Ultimately, though, this book is a shameless piece of propaganda that will doubtless serve to recruit children into the subversive ranks of otherkin.
As with the others, I read this one aloud to my (now 11-year-old) daughter. She was especially taken with Blunderbuss the Wombat.
"It was Spring that day, one of the very first warm days, when the sun seems to be trying Summer on for size, turning this way and that, blushing and helming and hawing and opening its top button, just to be daring."
Valente's writing is like maple syrup - languorous sweet amber. I'd pour it on anything.
"Oh, September. My best girl. I shall tell you an awful, wonderful, unhappy, joyful secret: It is like that for everyone. One day you wake up and you are grown. And on the inside, you are no older than the last time you thought Wouldn't it be lovely to be all Grown-Up right this second?"
Valente's writing is like maple syrup - languorous sweet amber. I'd pour it on anything.
"Oh, September. My best girl. I shall tell you an awful, wonderful, unhappy, joyful secret: It is like that for everyone. One day you wake up and you are grown. And on the inside, you are no older than the last time you thought Wouldn't it be lovely to be all Grown-Up right this second?"
“A story is a map of the world. A gloriously colored and wonderful map, the sort one often sees framed and hanging on the wall in a study full of plush chairs and stained-glass lamps: painstakingly lettered, researched down to the last pebble and participle, drawn with dash and flair, with cloud-goddesses in the corners and giant squid squirming up out of the sea...[T]here are more maps in the world than anyone can count. Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center. But that does not mean that no other countries exist.”
With the third book, this series was starting to lose some of its sparkle, but this fourth book brought it back. By changing focus from September to a baby troll who became a changeling, Ms. Valente show more brought new magic to the series.
“Being a troll, he loved the earth. A troll’s love for the earth is a peculiar thing—it is something like the way you and I love our parents and our dogs and our favorite novels and the stuffed rabbits we have had since we were in our cradles and the very best thing we have ever done with our own two hands, all smashed up together in a rough, enormous ball of feeling the size of a planet.”
Hawthorn the Troll, who becomes Thomas the Human Boy, broke my heart. He breaks almost everything he encounters, tries to talk to inanimate objects, and is, in many other ways, "Not Normal" according to his psychologist father. His story is a metaphor for every child who feels like they don't fit in. But he manages to find a friend who is also not of this world, and together they create additional friends and find a way back to Fairyland.
The best new character is Blunderbuss, the scrap-yarn patchwork Wombat from the land of Wom, created with "magic" by Thomas's loving mother. I really hope she -- because the gravelly-voiced, blunt-spoken Wombat is a kickass girl -- is in the last book. show less
With the third book, this series was starting to lose some of its sparkle, but this fourth book brought it back. By changing focus from September to a baby troll who became a changeling, Ms. Valente show more brought new magic to the series.
“Being a troll, he loved the earth. A troll’s love for the earth is a peculiar thing—it is something like the way you and I love our parents and our dogs and our favorite novels and the stuffed rabbits we have had since we were in our cradles and the very best thing we have ever done with our own two hands, all smashed up together in a rough, enormous ball of feeling the size of a planet.”
Hawthorn the Troll, who becomes Thomas the Human Boy, broke my heart. He breaks almost everything he encounters, tries to talk to inanimate objects, and is, in many other ways, "Not Normal" according to his psychologist father. His story is a metaphor for every child who feels like they don't fit in. But he manages to find a friend who is also not of this world, and together they create additional friends and find a way back to Fairyland.
The best new character is Blunderbuss, the scrap-yarn patchwork Wombat from the land of Wom, created with "magic" by Thomas's loving mother. I really hope she -- because the gravelly-voiced, blunt-spoken Wombat is a kickass girl -- is in the last book. show less
So how do you judge an exemplary YA adventure that stands out heads and shoulders above everything you've ever read in the field?
You don't. Or, at the very least, you judge it by the others in the series.
So that's what I'll do.
Unfortunately for me, I still can't decide between the first book and this one as being my favorite! UGGHH....
Sure, there happens to be another revolution, but this time it's all for the changelings. We even get a small role for September, and my previously ignorant prediction of seeing more of Saturday was a woefully misbegotten sentiment.
So just how wonderful is it to see a little troll boy grow up in Chicago?
Let me tell you: IT WAS SPECTACULAR.
Everything is turned on it's head from the previous books, and yet show more it's all so damn close. We've got a There and Back Again coming from exactly the wrong direction as the previous books, and what do you know? I actually prefer it! Did I see myself all in Thomas? Oh yes. Do I feel like doing a ton of Trollish things? Oh yes. Did I delight in rediscovering that I'm not NORMAL? Oh yes, yes, yes, Indeed, Yes. :)
Did a few tears fall from my eyes?
Yeah, surprisingly.
So beautiful. So utterly charming. show less
You don't. Or, at the very least, you judge it by the others in the series.
So that's what I'll do.
Unfortunately for me, I still can't decide between the first book and this one as being my favorite! UGGHH....
Sure, there happens to be another revolution, but this time it's all for the changelings. We even get a small role for September, and my previously ignorant prediction of seeing more of Saturday was a woefully misbegotten sentiment.
So just how wonderful is it to see a little troll boy grow up in Chicago?
Let me tell you: IT WAS SPECTACULAR.
Everything is turned on it's head from the previous books, and yet show more it's all so damn close. We've got a There and Back Again coming from exactly the wrong direction as the previous books, and what do you know? I actually prefer it! Did I see myself all in Thomas? Oh yes. Do I feel like doing a ton of Trollish things? Oh yes. Did I delight in rediscovering that I'm not NORMAL? Oh yes, yes, yes, Indeed, Yes. :)
Did a few tears fall from my eyes?
Yeah, surprisingly.
So beautiful. So utterly charming. show less
ORIGINALLY POSTED: https://bibliomantics.com/2017/01/01/my-year-in-reading-cassie-las-december-2016...
In the penultimate Fairyland book, author Catherynne M. Valente turns the series on its head, moving away from main character September for an entire story about a troll named Hawthorne who is taken from Fairyland to grow up in Chicago. It shouldn’t work. But you know what? It totally does!
In the penultimate Fairyland book, author Catherynne M. Valente turns the series on its head, moving away from main character September for an entire story about a troll named Hawthorne who is taken from Fairyland to grow up in Chicago. It shouldn’t work. But you know what? It totally does!
The fourth book of the Fairyland series, takes us out of Fairyland and away from September. This time we are following a young Troll, spirited out of Fairyland by the Red Wind, to take the place of a young boy as a Changeling. Tom struggles to fit in, to be Normal , the boy his father wishes he could be. But he can't. He is as sure of the existence of magic, and that everything; the chandalier, the ballerina painting in the hall, his scrap yarn wombat, are all alive. When he is twelve, he discovers he is not wrong, and he is not alone. Accompanied by another Chengeling, a baseball, a gramophone, and a stuffed Wombat, he steps through a painted forest and into Fairyland, for the greatest adventure of his life.
I love this series, I love show more the book, and I love Fairyland. These books never fail to make me feel like a child again. Like [book:Alice in Wonderland|13023], Fairyland is populated by strange and magical creatures, where around every corner lurks adventure and whimsy. Valente has created a world in which the young and young at heart can believe that Fairies and Trolls, Redcaps and Fetches, truly do exist.
Each book has renewed my sense of childlike wonder, but in addition to that, I am blown away at Valente's ability to weave words together to create a magical tale. She is a truly gifted writer, and I am more than bit jealous at how skilled a storyteller she is. Passages like the following never fail to bring a smile to my face and a thrill to my heart.
The Red Wind gently pulled a strand of Hawthorn's mossy hair free of his nightclothes. "A choice is like a jigsaw puzzle, darling troll. Your wories are the corner pieces, and your hopes are the edge pieces, and you, Hawthorn, dearest of boys, are the middle pieced, all funny-shaped and stubborn. But the picture, the picture was there all along, just waiting for you to get on with it."
Or this one:
It was Spring that day, one of the very first warm days, when the sun seems to be trying on Summer for size, turning this wsy and that, blushing and hemming and hawing and opening its top button, just to be daring. The grass shown with dew and damp. The trees all round had just let a few green buds out to survey the situation before any real leaves risked their necks. It was fine, and Thomas felt fine, his bones remembering heat and life and the fun of moving, all those things they had found too depressing to think about while the snow was throwing its weight around and feeling big in the chest.
But my favorite of all of course had to describe books:
As his irises opened up to let all that dusky softness in, Thomas saw that Tamburlaine's house was a house of books
It was not the house of someone who liked books. It did not have a well-stocked library. It was not even stuffed with books. Thomas could not see any part of the house that was not mostly book. Books rose from the floor to the ceiling in unruly, tottering towers. Books held up tables and chairs-- and sat in the chairs, at the tables, as though quite ready for supper to be served, so long as supper was more books. They sprawled over the dining room table like a feast of many colors. Books climbed the stairs, ran up and down the hallways, curled up before the fireplace, were wedged into the cabinets beside cups and saucers, held open doors and locked them shut. They left no room on the sofa to sit, nor in the kitchen to stand, nor on the floor to lie down. Books had already taken every territory and occupied it. Where the books were content to rest on shelves, like other, less ambitious of their cousins, they had been squashed in so tight their spines bulged, and then bowed under the weightof the books stacked on top of their sagging rows. Brick and wood only peeked through in a few places, and where they did, they looked positively embarrassed, apologetic. It's only that someone is borrowing The Picture of Dorian Gray at the moment, you see. The Thousand and One Nights has had an accident involving grape juice and gone on a little trip to the binder's; please don't think anyone left this space empty on purpose, goodness no!
Passages like these always leave me saying that I neec toread more by Valente, books written for adults, but you see I am quite unable to leave Fairyland behind. The final book in the series is due out in March, and I have done something quite unusual for me and pre-ordered it. I will be sad to read the final chapter in the book, but I will do so knowing that I get to start it all over again, by reading all of the books aloud with my two younger boys, who I know will be as filled with the wonder of Fairyland as I am. And maybe then, I will finally be able to crack the spine of another Valente novel. show less
I love this series, I love show more the book, and I love Fairyland. These books never fail to make me feel like a child again. Like [book:Alice in Wonderland|13023], Fairyland is populated by strange and magical creatures, where around every corner lurks adventure and whimsy. Valente has created a world in which the young and young at heart can believe that Fairies and Trolls, Redcaps and Fetches, truly do exist.
Each book has renewed my sense of childlike wonder, but in addition to that, I am blown away at Valente's ability to weave words together to create a magical tale. She is a truly gifted writer, and I am more than bit jealous at how skilled a storyteller she is. Passages like the following never fail to bring a smile to my face and a thrill to my heart.
The Red Wind gently pulled a strand of Hawthorn's mossy hair free of his nightclothes. "A choice is like a jigsaw puzzle, darling troll. Your wories are the corner pieces, and your hopes are the edge pieces, and you, Hawthorn, dearest of boys, are the middle pieced, all funny-shaped and stubborn. But the picture, the picture was there all along, just waiting for you to get on with it."
Or this one:
It was Spring that day, one of the very first warm days, when the sun seems to be trying on Summer for size, turning this wsy and that, blushing and hemming and hawing and opening its top button, just to be daring. The grass shown with dew and damp. The trees all round had just let a few green buds out to survey the situation before any real leaves risked their necks. It was fine, and Thomas felt fine, his bones remembering heat and life and the fun of moving, all those things they had found too depressing to think about while the snow was throwing its weight around and feeling big in the chest.
But my favorite of all of course had to describe books:
As his irises opened up to let all that dusky softness in, Thomas saw that Tamburlaine's house was a house of books
It was not the house of someone who liked books. It did not have a well-stocked library. It was not even stuffed with books. Thomas could not see any part of the house that was not mostly book. Books rose from the floor to the ceiling in unruly, tottering towers. Books held up tables and chairs-- and sat in the chairs, at the tables, as though quite ready for supper to be served, so long as supper was more books. They sprawled over the dining room table like a feast of many colors. Books climbed the stairs, ran up and down the hallways, curled up before the fireplace, were wedged into the cabinets beside cups and saucers, held open doors and locked them shut. They left no room on the sofa to sit, nor in the kitchen to stand, nor on the floor to lie down. Books had already taken every territory and occupied it. Where the books were content to rest on shelves, like other, less ambitious of their cousins, they had been squashed in so tight their spines bulged, and then bowed under the weightof the books stacked on top of their sagging rows. Brick and wood only peeked through in a few places, and where they did, they looked positively embarrassed, apologetic. It's only that someone is borrowing The Picture of Dorian Gray at the moment, you see. The Thousand and One Nights has had an accident involving grape juice and gone on a little trip to the binder's; please don't think anyone left this space empty on purpose, goodness no!
Passages like these always leave me saying that I neec toread more by Valente, books written for adults, but you see I am quite unable to leave Fairyland behind. The final book in the series is due out in March, and I have done something quite unusual for me and pre-ordered it. I will be sad to read the final chapter in the book, but I will do so knowing that I get to start it all over again, by reading all of the books aloud with my two younger boys, who I know will be as filled with the wonder of Fairyland as I am. And maybe then, I will finally be able to crack the spine of another Valente novel. show less
Like L. Frank Baum and C.S. Lewis before her, Catherynne M. Valente introduces a new protagonist in he ongoing series. In this case, it is Hawthorn, a young troll abducted by the Red Wind and placed with human parents in Chicago as a changeling. Raised as boy named Thomas, he is decidedly not Normal, but in one of the great moments of this book, he manages to win over the other kids and make friends anyway. One of these friends, Tamburlaine, is revealed to also be a changeling, a fetch made of wood. Together they find their way back to Fairyland where they become involved in a Changeling rebellion and a quest to find a familiar person. The upside of this book is that Valente's writing continues to be delightful with her vivid show more descriptions and turns of phrase. The downside is that I like the part in Chicago better than the latter part of the novel, and think it would've been interesting to have continued with the experience of Fairyland figures in the real world. show less
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172+ Works 22,502 Members
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- Canonical title
- The Boy Who Lost Fairyland
- Original title
- The Boy Who Lost Fairyland
- Original publication date
- 2015
- People/Characters
- Hawthorn (a Troll); The Red Wind (a Harsh Air); Iago (a Panther); Benjamin Franklin (a Postmistress); September (a Girl); Thomas Rood (a Boy) (show all 36); Gwendolyn Rood (his Mother); Nicholas Rood (his Father); A Baseball; Max (a Schoolboy); HUMPHREY! (a Desk); Mrs. Wilkinson (a Schoolteacher); Mr. Wolcott (a Substitute Schoolteacher); Mr. Granberry (a Gym Teacher); Tamburlaine (Perhaps a Girl, but Perhaps Not); Blunderbuss (a Wombat); Scratch (a Gramophone); Charles Crunchcrab (King of Fairyland); The Spinster (a Strega); Bespoke Espadrille (a Walrus, but Additionally, a Shoemaker); Penny Farthing (a Changeling); Bayleaf (also a Changeling); Herbert (a Changeling as Well); Sadie Spleenwort (a Sour Girl); The Office; Madame Tanaquill (a Prime Minister); Four Vicious Albino Moose; Saturday (a Marid); A-Through-L (a Wyverary); Aubergine (a Night-Dodo); Sir Sanguine (a Redcap); The Marquess (Former Ruler of Fairyland); Gratchling Gourdbone Goldmouth (a Clurichaun and Former King of Fairyland); Susan Jane (a Mechanic); Owen (her Husband); Margaret (an Aunt)
- Important places
- Chicago, Illinois, USA; Illinois, USA; Fairyland
- Dedication
- For all my brothers, those with whom I was a child and those who are children still.
- First words
- Once upon a time, a troll named Hawthorn lived very happily indeed in his mother’s house, where he juggled the same green and violet gemstones and matching queens’ crowns every day, slept on the same weather-beaten stone,... (show all) and played with the same huge and cantankerous toad.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"And I can take you there."
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