Cybils Winners! The Mirrorwood, by Deva Fagan

Happy Valentine's Day! For those whose greatest love may be books, it is more than appropriate that the winners of the Children's and Young Adult Book Lovers Literary Awards are announced today! Time to update your TBRs!

I'm excited that I finally get to talk about the winner in the Elementary/Midde-grade Speculative Fiction category: The Mirrorwood, by Deva Fagan.

Every one of the judges was impressed by the compelling writing and the imaginative world-building in this one. It starts with a girl who has been cursed with a blight: she has no face of her own, and has to borrow faces from people she touches. What an interesting curse, full of metaphorical possibilities! Appearance, identity, how our relationships with others define us—all the deep stuff!

Our heroine, Fable, escapes from blight hunters through a wall of thorns into an enchanted kingdom caught in time with a sleeping prince in a tower in a castle. 

People, it's a gender-reversed spin on Sleeping Beauty!

This was just such a fun story. Whimsical, likeable characters, a vivid, colourful world with interesting magic, and a lot of examination of fairy tale tropes: fairy godmothers, curses, demons and monsters, quests. Before Fable can end the blight and save the kingdom, she has to figure out who the good guys are, and just what, exactly, the curse is.

Also there's a great talking cat, and the annoyingly loquacious skull of a bad poet! So much to enjoy!

If I were to pick a food analogy for The Mirrorwood, I think I would go with the amazing chocolate chunk salted caramel cookies my sister and brother make, with chunks of Belgian chocolate and homemade caramel in a meal-sized cookie. Sweet and salty deliciousness with hidden depths and a different combination of flavours in every bite.

I will post reviews of the rest of the short-listed books over the next few Mondays, for Marvelous Midde-Grade Monday. Some very cool stories, and I'm excited to share them with you!