Valente creates a classic children's fantasy adventure in the vein of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with touches of Terry Pratchett and Lemony Snicket. September, a twelve-year-old girl from Omaha, Nebraska is drawn into Fairyland. Soon agrees to help some witches by stealing back a wooden spoon from Fairyland's tyrannical ruler the Marquess. She is helped by A-Through-L, a hybrid wyvern and library, and a marid named Saturday. But the Marquess gives her another quest, to recover a magical sword, while simultaneously hindering all of September's efforts.

And all of this happens well before September circumnavigates Fairyland in a ship of her own making. This novel is wonderfully imaginative and funny, deconstructing fantasy literature while also celebrating it. I expect to be reading more novels in this series. ( )

I lived this book. Wonderful fairy tale with beautiful language. ( )

This is like a high-end restaurant's classy, deconstructed version of one's favorite childhood dessert: it hits all the warm and fuzzy notes that a fun, romp-like, young-adult faerie tale should, while also having very worthwhile commentary on such topics as security theatre, the advantages and lack thereof of growing up, and the importance of feeling that you have agency over your own life.

Despite trying to cover some Big Ideas, and despite having some of the best world-building I've ever read, I barely noticed either of those things until I finished, because ultimately, The Girl Who Circumnavigated [etc] is, at it's heart, a faerie tale, and it reads like one: seamless and mythic. I felt wrapped up in the plot and the characters, with some room spared to appreciate the atmosphere. It was just once I finished that I realized how novel the book was. This is the type of book that I'll want to reread over and over again, and I am completely confident that I will find more each time I do.

It's worth noting, as an aside, that Valente's work is also extremely strong from a gender perspective: she has self-sufficient, interesting female characters who have myriad personalities and goals besides romantic ones. And unlike some books that have gotten critical acclaim for strong female characters, The Girl Who [etc] stars characters who break the bookish-eager to please-sidekick mold of female characters: the titular September is brash, nosy and heartless as well as brave, inventive and persistent; her mother is a mechanic.

There are so many other positive things to say: the denouement is clever (and extremely obvious once you know it, but so brave that I never expected it to be true!) and profound and sad, all at once. There is a Wyverary - a mix of a wyvern and a library who knows everything about everything as long as it starts with the letters A-L. There is a soap golem, who of course, has Truth inscribed on her forehead, and is of course, named Lye.

It's like the Phantom Tollbooth crashed into a faerie tale and it is absolutely delicious. ( )

Cute. ( )

Oohhh, this book was so cute. And so full of STUFF, it's just everything you could want out of fairyland with a whole bunch of weird and magical things and beings. And the characters, oh, the characters, I REALLY liked them, all of them. Even the evil characters were really well-written, and honestly sympathetic. I don't think I've ever been able to relate to a villain quite this much?

My only complaint is that sometimes there's too much stuff going on, and I couldn't really keep up. I will definitely try to get my hands on the rest of the series though, because I am very much intrigued and I do wanna see all the characters again (especially Ell, and not only because we share a name! Being half-wyvern, half-library sounds like the best thing ever). ( )