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I confess, I have yet to read the classic Gulliver’s Tale, but I read and reread T.H. White’s take on it, Mistress Masham’s Repose, in childhood. Naturally I had to read this more recent take on Lilliputians.

Lilliput by Sam Gayton, Alice Ratteree. Peachtree, 2015.
Lily is a young girl from Lilliput – about 11 months old, which translates to 11 human years. She’s tiny to humans, while humans are giant to her.  In this timeline, Gulliver has already published his famous book, but as the Lilliputian livestock he brought back all died off, everyone just thinks he’s crazy.  In desperation, he journeyed back to Lilliput and captured Lilly to prove the existence of Lilliput to everyone.

Now Lily’s life consists of one escape attempt after another.  Not only is she horrified at the idea of living her life on display, but she also knows that if people believed Gulliver, Lilliput itself would be overrun by humans and all of the Lilliputians would be driven to extinction.  Gulliver is not in fact quite sane anymore, but he is quite determined, and Lily’s multiple escape attempts have been met with increasingly harsh punishments, such as being put inside a stinky, itchy, flea-ridden wool sock hanging from the wall.  33 failed escape attempts, and Lily, with time running out as she ages so much more quickly than Gulliver, is still scheming.

Then, finally, a note she attached to a mouse is found by Finn, the abused servant boy downstairs. His master Mr. Plinker, is a cruelly inventive clockmaker, who makes clocks to tell time not accurately but as their designers wish – longer work hours and shorter play hours for workhouses, for example.  Finn himself is held captive by a wristwatch that digs ever more tightly into his wrist with every second he spends on something other than work.  Neither of them can escape alone, but together, they just might manage it.

Lily is just that kind of dauntless and plucky character that I couldn’t help but root for. This is one with appeal for almost everyone, the strong characters balancing the quick-moving plot. Alice Ratteree’s illustrations bring the coal- and clockwork-powered London to life. There were a few complaints from Amazon reviewers on the harshness of Gulliver’s fate, but I didn’t notice at the time and I am not sure that children would be bothered by the “bad guy” meeting a bad fate.  At any rate, this is one that both my mother and I heartily enjoyed (she liked it enough to nominate it for the Cybils herself).  It was short and fast enough for both of us to make it through in a day, which makes it also a good choice for slower readers or fantasy book assignments.

This book is nominated for the Cybils. This is my opinion, not that of the Cybils committee.

Can you resist an invincible hamster princess? I certainly couldn’t, and was quite relieved to find this just as much fun as it looked.

Hamster Princess: Harriet the Invincible by Ursula Vernon. Dial Books for Young Readers, 2015
Here is a twist on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale perfect for middle and upper elementary students, and younger for read-alouds.  Princess Harriet (yes, she is a hamster) is thrilled when her parents tell her that an early encounter with an evil fairy has doomed her to prick her finger on a hamster wheel and fall asleep on her twelfth birthday.  She’s always had trouble being the quiet, indoor type of princess and this means she’s invincible – she can do anything she wants!  Much to her parents’ disapproval – they would much rather she stayed home and work on finding the right prince to kiss her awake after the fact – she sets out on a life of adventure and monster-battling on her faithful quail steed.

Like Vernon’s popular Dragonbreath series, the story alternates prose storytelling with comic book panels, often for the action scenes.  Vernon makes this style work very well, and it’s a great choice, especially for reluctant readers who are intimidated by large blocks of text.  The story is fun for everyone, though.  Vernon looks at the stereotypes as she’s upending them, so that even as we’re sympathetic towards Harriet’s reluctance to take romance seriously at her young age and cheering for her on her adventures – Harriet also has some lessons to learn about her unthinking targeting of creatures she considers monsters.  There’s a whole lot of fun and, yes, adventure with a very likeable new heroine and her brave yet adorable quail. Ms. Yingling had mentioned that the hamsters are not quite as expressive as the reptiles in the Dragonbreath books.  Unfortunately, I have to agree with her.  I did have some trouble telling some of the characters and expressions apart, but that didn’t keep me from enjoying the book.  And it’s certainly not keeping this from flying off the shelves at my library.

Official disclaimer – this book is nominated for the Cybils award, but this is my personal opinion on the book, not the opinion of the Cybils committee.

Here’s a scary adventure story perfect for this time of year.

The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste. Algonquin Young Readers, 2015.
The woods of Trinidad are filled with jumbies, the collective term for a wide variety of supernatural creatures, with one thing in common: they do not mean humans well.  Most of the residents of Corinne’s village stay away from the forest.  Corinne’s father, though, doesn’t believe in the jumbies, and so Corinne feels free to take shortcuts through the woods.  But when two pesky boys steal the necklace she inherited from her mother and tie it to a lizard that runs into the woods, Corinne is sure she hears things following her.  It turns out that something even worse than the jumbies she’s grown up hearing about is after her – a jumbie in the shape of a beautiful woman who enchants her father so that he no longer recognizes Corinne.  She has no choice but to join with the two boys (maybe too quickly, in my one quibble with the book), as well as another girl from the marketplace, Dru, to try to stop the jumbie before the whole village is taken over with them.

As a child, I read through all the books of folk tales from around the world that I could find, so I definitely agree with the author that Caribbean folk tales are hard to find, and novels based on them rarer yet.  Baptiste – born and raised in Trinidad but now living in New York – has written a compelling story incorporating the folk lore she grew up with. (It was fun to hear her talk about this at Kidlitcon.) But even those who aren’t specifically interested in the folk tale can’t help but be captivated by the story.  Corinne is a winning character, and the adventure is exciting on its own merits.  Many of the jumbies are quite scary, from the one that looks like your grandmother until it takes off its skin and bursts into flame, to the ones that look like little kids in big hats that call your name and lure you into the forest, never to be seen again.  They aren’t hands-off in this story, either.  It’s nicely balanced with humor and affection, though, as Corinne builds friendships with the other children, works to save her beloved father and learns more about her power to grow.

Official disclaimer – this book is nominated for the Cybils award, but this is my personal opinion on the book, not the opinion of the Cybils committee.