The Boy Who Lost Fairyland
The fourth book in Valente's Fairyland series is a bit of a departure from the series so far. It follows a whole new cast of characters, and in some ways it acts as a mirror to the first book. This one is about Hawthorn, a troll who's plucked from his crib by a wind and taken to our world as a changeling. He has a difficult childhood. It's hard for him to figure out the rules of our world, and it's hard for his parents to relate to the new, changed him. But eventually he meets another changeling and finds his way back to Fairyland, where we start to understand the scope of the problems that September is at the root of.
The beginning of the book is a lot of fun, filled with callbacks to the beginning of the first book. Hawthorn's journey to our world isn't so different than September's first journey to Fairyland. And the meddlesome winds all seem to be reading from the same script. Then again, the beginning of the book is heartbreaking. We're not following a twelve-year-old girl off for a brief adventure and home before her mom even knows she's gone. We're following a baby who's never going to see his parents again (and another, missing baby that he's swapping with). The world changes and no one quite notices and so no one quite knows how to deal with it.
The changelings broke my heart, and maybe that's just the new mother in me talking. But I also read recently that the whole myth of changelings may have grown out of an early misunderstanding of autistic kids. Reading Hawthorn through that lens, whether or not Valente intended it, adds another layer to his struggles and his father's gruffness and his mother's unending but baffled love.
It was a relief to get back to Fairyland, where a whole bunch of loose plot threads come rushing together to hang the tapestry for the final installment. The balance between Fairyland and our world has been disrupted. Not by September, though her meddling seems to have pushed it further off balance. And now there's one final book. The balance will either be restored or the two worlds will be disconnected forever. (But come on, this is a kid's book, there's no real mystery about what's going to happen.) (Right?)
The beginning of the book is a lot of fun, filled with callbacks to the beginning of the first book. Hawthorn's journey to our world isn't so different than September's first journey to Fairyland. And the meddlesome winds all seem to be reading from the same script. Then again, the beginning of the book is heartbreaking. We're not following a twelve-year-old girl off for a brief adventure and home before her mom even knows she's gone. We're following a baby who's never going to see his parents again (and another, missing baby that he's swapping with). The world changes and no one quite notices and so no one quite knows how to deal with it.
The changelings broke my heart, and maybe that's just the new mother in me talking. But I also read recently that the whole myth of changelings may have grown out of an early misunderstanding of autistic kids. Reading Hawthorn through that lens, whether or not Valente intended it, adds another layer to his struggles and his father's gruffness and his mother's unending but baffled love.
It was a relief to get back to Fairyland, where a whole bunch of loose plot threads come rushing together to hang the tapestry for the final installment. The balance between Fairyland and our world has been disrupted. Not by September, though her meddling seems to have pushed it further off balance. And now there's one final book. The balance will either be restored or the two worlds will be disconnected forever. (But come on, this is a kid's book, there's no real mystery about what's going to happen.) (Right?)
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