num_pages: 323
description: Nicolettes awful stepsisters call her Mechanica to demean her but the nickname fits: she learned to be an inventor at her mothers knee. Her mom is gone now though and the Steps have turned her into a servant in her own home. But on her sixteenth birthday Nicolette discovers a secret workshop in the cellar and begins to dare to imagine a new life for herself. Could the mysterious books and tools hidden thereand the mechanical menagerie led by a tiny metal horse named Julesbe the key to escaping her dreary existence? With a technological exposition and royal ball on the horizon the timing might just be perfect for Nicolette to earn her freedom at last.Gorgeous prose and themes of social justice and family shine in this richly imagined Cinderella retelling about an indomitable inventor who finds her prince . . . but realizes she doesn't want a fairy tale happy ending after all.
language: English
title: Mechanica
publisher: Clarion Books