by Jane Yolen
Sycamore Public Library call number: J FIC YOL
As the story opens, 7-year-old Snow in Summer lives with her parents in the mountains of West Virginia. They are a happy family, gardening, laughing, singing, and playing music together. But then her mother dies giving birth, and the baby dies too. Since her Papa is useless and befuddled with grief, Summer's Godmother, Cousin Nancy, takes care of Summer daily. Small town gossips predict Nancy will be Papa's new mate, but that doesn't play out. After a few years of grieving, Papa recovers some, only to fall in love, to be besotted, with a strange woman he meets near the graveyard up on top of the mountain. He marries her when Summer is about 10, and she tries to adjust to having a Stepmama.
Author and title were open clues to me and I expected this to follow the path of a fairytale. What I really liked was the way the fairytale played out, with folk superstitions, Catholic prayers as well as serpent-handling believers. Set in the 1940s, the Stepmama possesses a magic mirror that foretells with rhymes, but even her car is evil and scary. Cousin Nancy notices, "that witch drove by going hellbent...she had Summer with her and they were heading out of town...The car was a dark green, like sludge in water near a coal mine."
I enjoyed the steady setup of the fairytale story, but read quickly through the suspenseful second half of the book. I recommend this book to 4th to 8th grade fans of extended fairytale chapter books.
Name: Mary A
AGE GROUP: Juvenile
CLASS: Fiction
Rating: B+
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