Snow
Grade 8 Up-"Once upon a time," a child was born to a duke and duchess in a remote corner of Wales- but the wife died giving birth, and the duke, in his grief, refused to have anything to do with the child. So begins this Victorian psychological thriller based loosely on "Snow White." When Jessica is about to enter adolescence, her father marries a vain, brilliant woman who longs to be taken seriously as a scientist. Her "experiments" combine medieval superstitions and modern scientific equipment to help her bear a male heir for the duke and are juxtaposed with sessions before a mirror held up for her by a literally spellbound servant/musician. When her stepdaughter's emerging beauty drives the duchess to murderous plans, the musician warns Jessica to escape, but only after her jealous stepmother has kept her a virtual prisoner for several years, rendering her complexion pale enough to earn her new name, Snow. The naive girl flees to London, where she immediately loses her purse in the confusion of Paddington Station and, wandering the streets, stumbles into the den of an unlikely band called "the lonely ones." No, there aren't seven of them-only five-but the many parallels to the folktale are imaginative and inventive. Like Donna Jo Napoli in her novelistic retellings of old tales, Lynn delves deeply into the psychological underpinnings of the folktale while maintaining a fast-paced plot with ingenious twists and turns that will keep readers as spellbound as some of the characters.Connie C. Rockman, Stratford Library Association, CTCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.