Out of the Woods by Lyn Gardner

The fun fair is in town! With its clouds of pink candy floss and whirling big wheel, what child could resist such temptation? Little do the Eden sisters know that they are being lured into a wicked witch s lair. . . . Belladonna wants Aurora's heart and Storm's all-powerful musical pipe, and she will stop at nothing to get them. Driven by vanity and greed, she makes a truly formidable adversary.

After escaping from a deadly game of hide-and-seek in the enchanted fair, our three heroines flee through the woods, with several ravenous wolves and a sweet-toothed lion hot on their heels. Now they face their biggest challenge yet: a treacherous journey into the Underworld. For only when the pipe has been safely returned to the land of the dead will the Eden sisters truly be out of the woods. . . .

What's really fun about Out of the Woods is that you are very quickly caught up with what has gone before, making this an almost-standalone novel which you can tackle with ease.

As in Into the Woods, the three sisters are lead astray and into a lot of trouble. Here, we have the relative of one of the previous baddies' come back for revenge. And you get the distinct impression that the witch Belladonna is far far meaner and more intelligent than deWilde from the previous book. I mean, let's face it: women are by FAR more ruthless as villains, they are also great to write and Ms. Gardner looks like she had a whale of a time playing with Belladonna.

Belladonna is interested in Aurora for her heart. With the heart of "the fairest in all the land" she can renew her youth and take revenge on behalf of her sister Storm and Aurora killed. Belladonna also wants that pesky flute that Storm tossed away but it has somehow made its way back into her ownership again.

Storm's big quest this time around is to travel to the Land of the Dead in search of Pandora's Box, from which the flute was taken in the first place.

As in Into the Woods what is central to the story is how the three sisters always have each other's back. Their motto of "Forever and Always" binds them together and it is a theme that is returned to often. I also think it is a very positive motto to have and what I like about Storm especially is like great action heroes in books and movies, she is constantly moving forward, thinking ahead (or sometimes just acting on gut instinct) but the onward momentum is kept high and constant. I like that and I approve of it for heroines and heroes.

These two books, Into the Woods and Out of the Woods have become firm favourites on my bookshelf. And books I'd recommend to younger and older readers alike. Again I'd recommend it to both boy and girl readers as I feel boys and girls will enjoy the Eden sisters' adventures of daring-do. And of course, the illustrations by the incomparable Mini Grey is just excellent and tongue in cheek amusing.

In fact, I am so excited about these two books, I've asked the publicity girls at Random House to please let me have copies to give away…and they've agreed.

**COMPETITION**

Very simply, tell me what is your favourite fairy tale - it can be Western, European, Russian, Chinese, Japanese etc. There will be a random draw on the 30th for the winner. Entrants from the UK only and again, you may enter as many times as you like!

Guest Blog: Lyn Gardner, talking wolves and fairy tales

After my review yesterday of Into the Woods, here then is the guest blog by author and arts reviewer, Lyn Gardner - she wot wrote Into the Woods. We are very fond of fairy tales here on MFB, reworked ones, ones made into movies and ones that can be told and retold. Which is why it is such a pleasure reading this guest blog. I hope you enjoy it too!

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*picture taken from First People Website

I’ve always loved a wolf. From Little Red Riding Hood to a well thumbed copy of Russian folk tales and Joan Aitkin’s thrilling The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, my childhood reading was full of wolves. So perhaps it was inevitable that when I began to write my first novel, Into the Woods, I knew that it would feature wolves.

Not, of course, that I immediately realised that I was writing a novel. There had already been too many half-hearted attempts to start that had petered out after the first couple of thousand words to really imagine that I might ever finish a book.

I first wrote about Storm Eden, and her housework-mad sister Aurora and baby sister Any (short for Anything) encountering wolves in the woods around their home, Eden End, while sitting on Bristol railway station late one winter’s night. It was freezing cold, the last train back to London had been delayed by over an hour and it had began to snow. Perhaps it was the snow that made me think of wolves.

At that stage I only had the vaguest of idea of who these sisters were (although I knew that Storm with her red hair was brave, reckless and stormy, like her name) and I didn’t know why they were being chased by wolves. The Pied Piper figure, the wicked Dr DeWilde, only began to take shape later, rising like a spectre from folk-lore and half remembered stories and nightmares. But on that deserted railway platform close to midnight, the sisters suddenly started to come alive on a sheet of A4 paper as they tried to desperately avoid being eaten by wolves. The section of the story I wrote in pencil that night eventually made it into the published version of Into the Woods pretty well intact, and although by that time it wasn’t the beginning of the story, it always felt as if it was close to its dark heart.

Perhaps from wolves it was always going to be a short leap to fairytales. But the re-imagined fairytale format also provided a useful crutch for a fledgling writer who didn’t have much confidence in her own ability to come up with strong narrative ideas. The stories I’d made up at bedtime for my own daughters frequently used fairytale templates, and as an arts journalist on the Guardian I had often written about the hold of fairytales and myth on our imaginations from Beauty and the Beast to JM Barrie’s terrible masterpiece, Peter Pan.

Using fairytales allowed me to build on what I had already began, and without them that first scene of the sisters escaping from the woods may have joined all those others scribbled pages of novels began, but never continued or finished, in the waste paper bin. But a few months later as we were setting off on a family holiday to visit our American cousins I came across the scene in the woods with the wolves and vowed to take it with me. My daughters (then seven and 11) had long pestered me to write a children’s novel, and I told them that during the holiday I would write them a chapter every night and read it aloud at bedtime to them and their cousins who ranged in age from 10 to 14.

It was a brilliant way to really kick-start a first novel. Not only did I have around 15,000 handwritten words on our return to England, but I’d also had something that money can’t buy any writer: a captive audience of children in the age range for whom you are writing to try your book out on as you are in the very act of writing it. I soon got a real sense of what held their attention and what didn’t, the jokes they laughed at and the ones that fell flat, and I suspect it’s no accident, given Into the Wood’s oral origins, that so many parents and teachers have since told me how well the novel reads aloud.

Pied Piper - Artwork by Arthur Rackham

The hard graft, of course, began on my return to London. Like a lot of would-be authors I liked the idea of being writer more than I enjoyed actually the prospect of sitting in front of a computer screen and putting words into sentences that eventually become paragraphs and chapters. As the number of words began to grow, I suddenly dared to imagine that for the first time in my life I was actually going to finish a book. Continuing to read what I had written aloud to my children really helped, and I had a real boost after sending off the first 25,000 words to an agent, Rosemary Canter at United Agents (then PFD) who was hugely enthusiastic and told me to hurry up and finish it by Christmas. After that, the more I wrote, the easier it became to write, as the story and the characters took on a life of their own almost rolling out in front of my eyes like a movie as the sisters crossed glaciers, fell down mine shafts, took part in spelling contests and defeated the wily Dr DeWilde.

I wanted to show the girls taking risks, breaking rules and having real adventures while celebrating the ups and downs of sisterhood and family life and relationships. As a sister of sisters and the mother of daughters I felt it was something that I knew about, and one of the pleasures of being a published author (which I can still hardly believe) has been the fan letters I’ve received about Into the Woods, and its sequel Out of the Woods, not just from children in the 8-12 age range but from their elder sisters and mothers too saying that they recognize its portrait of siblings.

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Thanks so much to Lyn for stopping by! Now if reading this article and my reviews (which are ace!) don't want to make you pick up reading these two books, I don't know what will. Stop by tomorrow for my review of Out of the Woods and a cracking chance to win these two books.

Into the Woods by Lyn Gardner

Synopsis:

Taking inspiration from numerous fairytales and weaving them into a wholly original story, INTO THE WOODS is a whirlwind of a novel, full of imaginative happenings, dastardly deeds and thrilling adventure.

Our guides are sisters three: Storm, Aurora and Anything Eden. Accidentally orphaned and left to fend for themselves in a decaying mansion on the edge of the wilds, they come to the very much unwanted attention of the sinister Dr DeWilde: a scar-faced gentleman with a pied waistcoat and an unhealthy interest in rats. He's after a tiny little musical pipe that Storm has inherited, and he'll stop at nothing to get it.

Fleeing into the woods, our courageous and eccentric sisters evade kidnap (almost), resist the temptation of sweet-filled orphanages (nearly!), and begin a treacherous journey across raging rivers, over mountains of ice, through deathly silent ghost towns and beyond the lairs of child-eating ogresses. With ravenously hungry wolves snapping at their heels every step of the way!

Featuring wonderful illustrations by award-winning illustrator Mini Grey, INTO THE WOODS is a classic tale with a very modern twist and will delight readers of every generation.

I had doubts about Into the Woods. I looked at the cover (done by Mini Grey) and the artwork within and thought: am I ready for this? It looks incredibly twee and I'm not fond of twee. I girded myself and stepped in.

First of all, Into the Woods is anything but twee - actually, I should quantify that and say I thought it would be self-conscious and purposefully sweet and ditzy. All because of a) the cover which I didn't initially like and b) the actual write up on the story, making me think it was going to be a parody of some fairy tale.

However, within the first few pages I realised that my preconceptions was once again WRONG. It is dark and humorous and probably too clever for its own good.

I spent a lot of time checking out the artwork by Mini that accompanies the written words on the pages. Clever little drawings that enhance the overall narrative and gives the reader a chance to discover more about the story they are reading.

Storm is the character in the book I identified with the most. She is wild, impetuous, seems to know better but often does not, and is a bit dangerous to know and obsessed with firecrackers. She also doesn't listen to her sister Aurora telling her not to go into the forest which is dark and dangerous. Aurora is a studious daughter, taking care of the household whilst her mother languishes and sighs to herself. Their father is equally rubbish at being a parent - wrapped up in his various quests to find mythological creatures. He really annoyed me and I disliked the girls for making excuses for him when he literally crumpled after his wife died in giving birth to Any. Then he stayed around for a bit, after Any's birth, but he was no use to anyone. Then he disappeared off on another quest by himself, leaving the very young girls with no money and no one to take care of them!

But then, Aurora and Storm are no ordinary girls. Storm's adventures are crazymad and she dislikes being cooped up. During one of her previous rambles, she discovered that the nearby town has hired a nasty man called Dr. DeWilde to get rid of the rat infestation. The doctor uses his trained wolves to pounce on and kill the rats in question - not pleasant. But there is something very odd about DeWilde and Storm senses it. It's not long till DeWilde comes to their house to ask them about a flute/pipe which Zella, their mother, had given over to Storm for safekeeping on her deathbed. The fact that she chooses Storm to be caretaker of this flute is significant and although Storm is initally charmed by the flute, she doesn't have much use for it and soon it is lying in the pantry, gathering dust.

And from there onwards, we have the girls thrust into all manner of nasty situations that reads like mish-mash of fairy tales from Grimm, Carter, Perrault combined. There are witches, an ogress, lots of wolves, narrow escapes, mountains to climb, villains to see off and a sister (or two) to rescue. It's a busy story and once things were being laid out I thought that I may get lost in all the adventure, but I'm happy to report that each bit of adventure is it's own adventure - does that make sense? - and that the plotting of the overall story is very good.

It didn't take me very long at all to fall for Into the Woods and Lyn Gardner's writing. It's charming and funny with larger than life villains and some utterly over the top situations blended with smatterings of the familiar fairy tales we all know and love, so well.

I'd recommend this for readers say 11+ who like their heroines unconventional and the storytelling vivid and bright. I'd also hasten to add that although the book has three female characters as leads, it is a very boy-friendly book, from the adventure aspect of it all, along with the creepiness that sometimes rears its head. And there is fighting and explosions. Because this is Lyn Gardner, after all.

Into the Woods and it's companion novel, Out of the Woods, is out now from Random House. I'll also be reviewing Out of the Woods and I'm very happy to have Lyn on the blog tomorrow as she's written us an amazing guest blog. So stick around for that.