Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy by Karen Foxlee (review)

Still reeling from the death of her mother, eleven-year-old Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard copes by restricting her beliefs to the scientifically proven. However, science fails her when, at a strange museum, she meets a mysterious, nameless boy (locked behind a door and visible only through the golden keyhole) who tells her he has been chosen by wizards to deliver a magical sword to the One Other who will defeat the Snow Queen and save the world. After helping the boy escape his prison, Ophelia embarks on an adventure including encounters on various museum floors with monstrous “misery birds” (huge eagle-headed, human-eating creatures with bat wings), ghosts of girls whom the Queen has fed into a mysterious machine that sustains her life, and malevolent mannequins and taxidermy that occasionally come to life. Foxlee inventively weaves familiar folkloric elements—an evil snow queen, a magic sword, a quest, a chosen one—into her modern setting, all the while evoking a mood of dreamlike foreboding. Ophelia and the boy are intriguing characters, reluctant in their heroism (“She had expected magic to be very clean and powerful, but instead it was messy and uncomfortable and full of decisions. It made her legs tremble”) but plowing ahead anyway. Her astute observations about her family’s grief add a touching and serious note; equally poignant is Ophelia’s encounter with the ghosts of the girls killed by the Queen. Atmospheric, fullspread monochromatic illustrations open each of the book’s three parts, adding to the story’s sense of magic. The combination of fairy tale elements and a bit of age-appropriate darkness calls up Ursu’s Breadcrumbs (BCCB 10/11), and this will appeal to Ursu’s fans.