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Reviewed by:
  • Magicalamity by Kate Saunders
  • Kate Quealy-Gainer
Saunders, Kate. Magicalamity. Delacorte, 2012. 305p. Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-98968-1 $19.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-385-74077-7 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-375-98928-5 $10.99 Ad Gr. 4–6.

It’s unusual to discover that your mother has been bewitched into a jar of tomatoes and your father is now living as a bat, but that’s exactly what happens to poor Tom Harding, a supposedly normal eleven-year-old boy who discovers he’s not so normal after all. It turns out that Dad, unbeknownst to mortal Mom, is a fairy (making Tom a demisprite) and that before he joined the human world, Dad got into some trouble in the Realm: namely, he’s charged with the murder of a member of the fairy world’s most powerful family. Tom knows his father is no killer and sets off to clear Dad’s name but somehow manages to stir up a fairy revolution in the process. Despite his sudden status as an anything-but-ordinary kid, Tom is a bit of a bore, and his tendency to complain and yearn for normalcy makes the magic of the fairy world difficult for readers to appreciate. The bulk of the amusement here comes in the form of Lorna, Iris, and Dahlia, Tom’s trio of bickering fairy godmothers who help him on his mission and who manage to make even the most mundane event of teatime into a dramatic, hilariously absurd affair; their backstories of secret rebellions, forbidden romances, and rogue spellcasting make Tom’s tale pale in comparison. The world is nonetheless imaginative, and readers looking for a quick, magical romp will find it here.

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