Spoiler-free summary: Muggles is a Minnipin, a race of people who have lived a safe, sheltered life separated from the rest of the world for centuries, which has led most of them to become boring and conformist. Muggles wakes up one night to find the three town outcasts conferring, and more alarmingly, fires on top of the mountains that protect the Minnipin valley from outsiders. This kicks off a series of events that makes Muggles and her village as a whole reconsider who they are, where they came from, and who they want to be. A fun mix of fantasy, action, and humor.
Discussion: Delightful. The Newbery medal winners that have skewed fantasy have all been pretty solid entries. A Wrinkle in Time is a classic, if you want to put it in that box, but I also really loved The Hero and the Crown and The Girl Who Drank the Moon. This one doesn’t quite live up to those, but it still was a good time, especially after a couple of very serious novels on my Honors list.
I loved the sense of humor that runs through this. There are some discussions early in the book of characters trying to decipher the meaning of Fooley’s artifacts, and the wrong explanations Kendall comes up with are really clever – Walter the Earl “correcting” the interpretation on Mary Had a Little Lamb to actually be about a lamprey is especially good.
The publisher calls this book and its sequel “epic” – I haven’t read the follow-up book, but I don’t think this qualifies as epic. There’s some history and a small self-contained world here, but it’s a just a little story with a handful of characters leading one small quest. But that’s completely okay! I don’t need a world built in every fantasy story I read, sometimes a just want to drop in for a few days, set the stage, fight a quick sword battle, and leave with a happy ending.
My next book is my first (of many) Honor books that are by an author who also won the medal. It’s by Robert Lawson, author of winner Rabbit Hill: The Great Wheel.
Leave a Reply