The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

Valente, C. M. (2011). The girl who circumnavigated Fairyland in a ship of her own making. (Juan, A. illus.). Square Fish. 288 pages. ISBN 9781250010193

Primary genre: fantasy

Other elements: adventure, mystery, friendship, family, coming of age

Intended reader age: 10 and up

Synopsis:

September is quite bored an unhappy with her life in Omaha so when the Green Wind comes along and offers her the opportunity to have an adventure in Fairyland, she jumps at the chance without the slightest bit of hesitation. But, Fairyland is not all that September hoped or expected. The land has been taken over by the Marquess and it has fallen September to find a way to remove her. While traveling though Fairyland September makes friends with a Wyverary named Ell and a Marid named Saturday. But, removing the Marquess does not go smoothly and September finds herself in the position of performing an errand for the Marquess or losing her friends.

Review:

I liked that I was able to see where Valente pulled much of her inspiration from. There were so many elements in this story that had me thinking of classic children’s literature: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, the Narnia series, etc. But, the way the author included these elements did not leave me with the feeling that she was just rewriting those stories. Her ideas and concepts were very original. The amount of world building she did was just fantastic; I always appreciate an author who puts thought into the rules of their world. The nonsensical nature did not overpower the story; it made it more fun and unpredictable.

The inclusions of the narrator moments were a nice addition. There were times where the narrator would ‘step in’ and give the readers background information or tell of another aspect that was occurring in the world. At times these did remind me of the narrator from The Series of Unfortunate Events. But, this could have been just because I do not encounter this tactic too often in the stories I read.

There are two things that I greatly enjoyed about this story: the ending and the language. The ending was fantastic because of how it made me re-think some of those classic tales I greatly enjoy. It’s not something I can really go into here, because I do not want to ruin the story. Spoilers. But, it was definitely one of those moments where I had to stop and think about how sad it really must be. Too often when we hit that point in a story it is the ending so authors tie everything up in a nice little, happy bow. The language though, my goodness, Valente surely knows how to put together a sentence: “Those were all big words, to be sure, but as has been said, September read often, and liked it best when words did not pretend to be simple, but put on their full armor and rode out with the colors flying” (p. 51). There is now a second book, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, which continues the story of September and her adventures in Fairyland.

Just one of the gorgeous illustrations from the story.