Thursday, August 6, 2015

Summer Reading 2015 Imelda and the Goblin King


Fans of books like Bullies Never Win and Enemy Pie will find this story an enchanting (pun intended) new way to deal with grumpy bullies who push everyone around. Imelda lives near a wood, like many children in fairy tales do. (Think of Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, etc.) Imelda loves to visit the woods and her friends the fairies. The fairy queen and all her subjects enjoy Imelda's visits and they teach her all about the woods and its secrets. Everything is going along beautifully until...the Goblin King arrives. He does not play well with others (he probably never went to preschool or kindergarten and learned how to make friends). Readers will be outraged at the king's behavior and then delighted at how Imelda and her friends ingeniously teach him a lesson. 

Briony May Smith's illustrations are fun and fanciful. The fairies come in a variety of sizes from adult human, down to almost as small as a butterfly. Some of them look like miniature humans, while others have blue skin, fox heads, or wings. The goblins are tiny versions of their king - with their green skin, pointy teeth and fingernails, horns, and cruel or angry expressions they are easy to distinguish from the fairies.

If you enjoy stories with magical creatures (of whatever size), tales where the hero outsmarts the evil villain, or strong female characters who stand up for their friends - then you should find a cop of Imelda and the Goblin King. It's perfect for a read-aloud, a bedtime story, or to complement a unit on fairy tales.

I read an e-book provided by the publisher through edelweiss.

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