{"id":259,"date":"2008-11-11T22:50:39","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T02:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/11\/review-of-wildwood-dancing-by-juliet-marillier\/"},"modified":"2008-11-26T23:20:45","modified_gmt":"2008-11-27T03:20:45","slug":"review-of-wildwood-dancing-by-juliet-marillier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=259","title":{"rendered":"Review of Wildwood Dancing, by Juliet Marillier"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wildwood_dancing.jpg\"<\/em><\/p>\n

Wildwood Dancing<\/em><\/p>\n

by Juliet Marillier<\/p>\n

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2007.\u00a0 407 pages.<\/p>\n

Starred Review<\/p>\n

www.randomhouse.com\/teens<\/a><\/p>\n

“I’ve heard it said that girls can’t keep secrets.\u00a0 That’s wrong: we’d proved it.\u00a0 We’d kept ours for years and years, ever since we came to live at Piscul Dracului and stumbled on the way into the Other Kingdom.\u00a0 Nobody knew about it — not Father, not our housekeeper, Florica, or her husband, Petru, not Uncle Nicolae or Aunt Bogdana or their son, Cezar.\u00a0 We found the portal when Tati was seven and I was six, and we’d been going out and coming in nearly every month since then: nine whole years of Full Moons.\u00a0 We had plenty of ways to cover our absences, including a bolt on our bedchamber door and the excuse that my sister Paula sometimes walked in her sleep.<\/p>\n

“I suppose the secret was not completely ours; Gogu knew.\u00a0 But even if frogs could talk, Gogu would never have told.\u00a0 Ever since I’d found him long ago, crouched all by himself in the forest, dazed and hurt, I had known I could trust him more than anyone else in the world.”<\/p>\n

So begins a wonderfully intricate tale loosely based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” but with many intricate plot threads woven through the tale.<\/p>\n

Jenica and her four sisters spend the night of every Full Moon dancing in the Wildwood, in the Other Kingdom.\u00a0 They have rules to keep themselves safe, like no eating and drinking while there, no wandering into the forest.<\/p>\n

But things in the Other Kingdom begin to change when the Night People show up.\u00a0 Rumors about them in the mountains of Transylvania are dark and sinister.\u00a0 One of them shows a particular interest in Tati, Jena’s oldest sister.<\/p>\n

At the same time, everyday life is getting out of control.\u00a0 For the sake of his health, their father must spend the winter in the city, and he leaves them in charge.\u00a0 But Cezar, their interfering cousin, quickly makes it clear that he doesn’t think women capable of that responsibility, and he begins “helping” them by taking over.\u00a0 They don’t hear from their father and cannot stop Cezar.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Cezar has a grudge against the folk of the Other Kingdom and vows to destroy the Wildwood.<\/p>\n

This tale is beautifully written.\u00a0 Jena is resourceful.\u00a0 She loves her sisters and loves her friend the frog.\u00a0 She glories in her friends from the Other Kingdom.\u00a0 She tries to protect them, and herself, from Cezar’s manipulations.<\/p>\n

This wonderful and rich storytelling quickly captivated me.\u00a0 It gives the flavor of Transylvania, going beyond the stereotypes to deeper myths.\u00a0 A haunting tale of wonder and cleverness and sacrifice and true love.<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on the main site at:<\/p>\n

www.sonderbooks.com\/Teens\/wildwood_dancing.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2007.\u00a0 407 pages. Starred Review www.randomhouse.com\/teens “I’ve heard it said that girls can’t keep secrets.\u00a0 That’s wrong: we’d proved it.\u00a0 We’d kept ours for years and years, ever since we came to live at Piscul Dracului and stumbled on the way into the Other Kingdom.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,9,24,42,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fairy-tale-variant","category-fantasy","category-romance","category-starred-review","category-teen-fiction-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}