Ever After High: The Storybook of Legends Author: Shannon Hale | Language: English | ISBN:
B00DB7R8D6 | Format: PDF
Ever After High: The Storybook of Legends Description
At Ever After High, an enchanting boarding school, the children of fairytale legends prepare themselves to fulfill their destinies as the next generation of Snow Whites, Prince Charmings and Evil Queens...whether they want to or not. Each year on Legacy Day, students sign the Storybook of Legends to seal their scripted fates. For generations, the Village of Book End has whispered that refusing to sign means The End-both for a story and for a life.
As the daughter of the Evil Queen, Raven Queen's destiny is to follow in her mother's wicked footsteps, but evil is so not Raven's style. She's starting to wonder, what if she rewrote her own story? The royal Apple White, daughter of the Fairest of Them All, has a happy ever after planned for herself, but it depends upon Raven feeding her a poison apple in their future.
What if Raven doesn't sign the Storybook of Legends? It could mean a happily never after for them both.
- File Size: 2003 KB
- Print Length: 312 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0316401226
- Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (October 8, 2013)
- Sold by: Hachette Book Group
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00DB7R8D6
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,837 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #14
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Fairy Tales & Folklore
- #14
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Fairy Tales & Folklore
Okay, now before I start, let me say, I have read all of Shannon Hale's other YA books and Goose Girl and Rapunzel's Revenge will always hold a special place in my heart. Admitting that, along with the fact I am a major Ever After High fan, I will now commence with my review.
The book is centered around Apple White and Raven Queen, two students in Ever After High. For those of you not familiar with Ever After High, it is a high school where the sons and daughters of fairy tale characters go. On their second year, every student must pledge to follow in their parent's footsteps. If a student doesn't take the pledge, then the story they are in and they themselves will cease to exist. Apple White is the perfect future queen, caring, smart, beautiful and kind. Her only perceivable flaw is the fact she is blonde (so the book says, multiple times). She is ready to take on her destiny as queen. Raven, on the other hand, is the daughter of the evil queen. All her life, people have been telling her to be evil, and expected her to be a horrible person. Raven wants to be able to change her fate.
Raven and Apple are going into their second year at Ever After High, the year when they take the pledge. They are rooming together, and are very different people. Raven wants to choose her own fate, and Apple is trying to make sure that Raven stays on her path, so that the story will continue to exist and her own story will end happily ever after. The relationship between them is very Wicked Galinda-Elphaba. Neither really understands the other at first, but the gradually become friends, despite the fact that Raven will someday have to poison Apple. Awkward much?
I really didn't like Apple. Although she is just a pawn, she is very self-centered.
The Ever After High franchise is quite extensive. It contains dolls - each coming with a diary, the character's profile, and an in-package quote; a web series - with the first webisode appeared on Youtube on May 30, 2013; and several books by Shannon Hale (I'm counting the free Kindle releases as individual books). Plus, even more supplementary material on the official website.
For the most part, character portrayal is pretty consistent across the board. There are however a couple of characters that stuck out to me as being represented very differently in book then in rest of the EAH universe.
>>> MAJOR spoilers ahead.
The most noticeable change to me was in Baba Yaga's depiction. She's a faculty advisor at EAH and in the webisodes is shown to be a sweet-looking elderly lady who is firm to her students but flinches at glare from Headmaster Grimm. In Raven's doll dairy she is somewhat stern but still compassionate towards Raven, kindly granting her request to join Muse-ic Class - a course outside her core curriculum. On the official website, the backstory of a game level has her helpfully informing Raven about trilogy of books that would help her learn "good" magic.
In the book, she's a faculty advisor at EAH who has cockroaches crawling in her hair, sprays her charges with a squirt bottle like they were cats, and even once tells Raven to be grateful she doesn't turn her into a worm and feed her to a newt. She also scares the Headmaster with one of her high-pitched crackling laughs.
It's a complete 360 in her characterization, but I kinda like this cranky, witchier version of Baba Yaga in the book. I think the tougher incarnation suites her mythology better too.
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