School for Good and Evil #1

The School for Good and Evil, it sounds like a light breezy read doesn’t it? What it really is *flabbergasted for the right word* is well, downright MAGNIFICENT! I haven’t loved a book so much in a very long time, and I devour books like a maniac. It literally went above and beyond any expectation I could have conceived for it. I picked it up thinking: “This will be quite the fluffy fairytale,” but was blown away because it was nothing of the kind.Lets begin with the description: I love that it tells you exactly what The School for Good and Evil is about without giving away even an inkling of just how this tale is going to be delivered. This is a book that can definitely be enjoyed by fairy tale lovers of all ages. Especially if you don’t mind your fairy tales having a bit of a dark side. Not too dark mind you but just the right amount. Yes, JUST RIGHT!!There are wonderful comic moments, that I couldn’t help but smirk at. I felt like the author was making fun of so many things and it tickled me pink to no end. However, there are also some moments that tightened my chest and throat. You know what I’m talking about, that’s right when you are biting back the tears. I’m not normally a crier…I’m a laugh-er. So, I don’t think I can explain well enough why this book touched me so much. Also, it is full of beautiful illustrations! At least one for the start of each chapter. These added the perfect storybook touch.What surprised and absolutely delighted me was how much I loved all of the characters. I grew attached to all of them! From main, to sidekicks, to little supplemental characters. They were all given realism and depth of character that made each unique and memorable. My favorite is Hort…you’ll hear me gush about him again. *smirk*I was captured immediately by the wry sense of humor one of the main characters Agatha possessed. She looks like your typical fairy tale witch but somehow ends up in the School for Good! As you can see from the quote below. She is a snappy girl and I couldn’t help but love her.“Graveyards have their benefits,” Agatha said. “No nosy neighbors. No drop-in salesmen. No fishy ‘friends’ bearing face masks and diet cookies, telling you you’re going to Evil School in Magic Fairy Land.”Soman Chainani writes characters that we can see reflected back in ourselves. These are the children that we once were, or hey for those young readers, perhaps who they still are. I think he was delving deep trying to get his readers to challenge those childhood tropes of Good and Evil. Are you beautiful with flawless skin and impeccable clothes? Are you ugly with warts and foul body odor? Does eating lots of sweets really lead you down a road of sin and temptation? Well shucks folks, I MUST be Evil because I’m a total greedy gobbler!Prepare yourself for the “Evers” and the “Nevers” – that’s what these kids call themselves, for that’s how their stories go. But onto my favorite character Hort, of course he is a “Never,” attending the School for Evil. He was such a sad pathetic looking little guy, but he was excitable and friendly and hey he was Evil right, but he wasn’t – so what is he? This quote is when I first met him – and the little girl in me that loves the underdog had high hopes for him.He looked like a sinister little weasel.“The bird ate my shirt,” he said. “Can I touch your hair?” Sophie backed up.“They don’t usually make villains with princess hair,” he said, dog-paddling towards her.”Then in unexpected moments my heart would break…and frequently it was Hort that would do this to me.“Dad told me villains can’t love. That it’s unnatural and disgusting.” … “So I definitely can’t love,” Hort said. … “But if I could love, I’d love you.”If that isn’t sad…unrequited love, then blast I don’t know what is!Agatha sums up the best element of this tale for me and precisely how I feel about villains! They are a major part of what makes a story worth reading. Often I feel like some authors treat them just as a way to make the good guy look better or “grow” into that strong character that the reader wants to love. But me? I’m usually secretly rooting for the bad guy.“She had always found villains more exciting than heroes. They had ambition, passion. They made the stories happen. Villains didn’t fear death. No, they wrapped themselves in death like suits of armor! As she inhaled the school’s graveyard smell, Agatha felt her blood rush. For like all villains, death didn’t scare her. It made her feel alive.” ​​The School for Good and Evil captures the true spirit of the human heart in so many ways that I was laughing, cringing, weeping and just dying to get to the end to know how this fairy tale would end. And now?…now I’m so sad that it’s over.​ I know this book will become a hearthstone in my library, one that I will read my own child when he gets older and that I will return to time and again.So consider this readers…"What’s the one thing Evil can never have…and the one thing Good can never do without?"P.S. There is already a film being planned for 2015! *squees in utter joy and runs off before I keep up with the spewings of love*

I am the author of a fairy tale retelling myself and a scholar of fairy tales. The School for Good and Evil has the level of sophistication that I wish to achieve in my writing. Soman Chainani studied the genre at Harvard under Maria Tatar, who has written extensive research on fairy tales and children's literature, research that has informed my own writing. As such, I can assure readers that he is very familiar with fairy tales as a genre and manipulates the tropes and motifs excellently in this book. Many of the criticisms I am reading take issue with how beauty is considered a necessary quality in the School for Good, just as ugliness is in the School for Evil. They seem to think that the author is promoting these ideals, when in fact he is subverting them. Fairy tales as a whole are subversive, and Soman Chainani delves into that in a way that I have never seen in an MG book before. Chainani is not endorsing the good=beautiful ideal; he is challenging it by making it clear that there are issues with this outlook. Girls who are beautiful on the outside are not necessarily beautiful on the inside, and those who are not beautiful are not necessarily evil. Some have criticized that Agatha becomes pretty at the end, but I did not read it that way. I did not read her as having magically transformed into someone beautiful, but that she had made the decision to dress up for a party. I found it refreshing that she was not forced to dress up--no one tied her to a salon chair. She decided that she wanted to. That was her decision, and I thought it was a good message for girls that they don't have to dress up if they don't want to, but if they want to, then it's nobody else's business.This is not the only binary that Chainani deconstructs. By the end of the book, it is clear that the line between good and evil is not clear and that the division of the two with strict adherence to the boundaries between them is the oppressive plot of an evil, male force. No one is sure who is good and who is evil at the end, and that is the point! We do not see people who are 100% good or 100% evil in the real world, and the characters in SGE break free from the lie that such a binary exists.Other criticisms I have seen include that the book has too much sexualization. I can understand the confusion because the main characters state that only children over twelve are taken to SGE. However, there are four years between each kidnapping. This means that Sophie and Agatha are anywhere between twelve and sixteen. My reading of their behaviors and interests led me to believe that they were fifteen to sixteen, an age where young people begin exploring different ways to express their bodies. There is no actual sex, of course (barely even a kiss), but I would rest assured that the author is not sexualizing twelve-year-olds, not in the way that our modern day Princess Culture does. Chainani is challenging Princess Culture, and the parts that make readers uncomfortable are meant to! They are meant to make us examine the expectations that we place on young people today and realize that they are harmful. There is a romance subplot, but it is a distraction. The most important relationship is that between Sophie and Agatha, which struggles to survive in a place that is determined to keep them apart. One review suggested that the book is insensitive to LGBTQIAP+ people. I do not belong to this group, so I cannot speak for them, but even as a straight person I can see that there is an easy queer reading between Sophie and Agatha. As I said, I am not a member of this group so I cannot say whether it succeeds, but the tones are there. The environment of the SGE is not supportive of this group, but this goes along with the other elements about SGE that are supposed to make us uncomfortable; the attitudes at SGE in many areas are not right, and the characters fight against these attitudes about sexuality, beauty, and gender throughout the book.I encourage readers to look between the lines in this book. If you are giving it to a teen, take advantage of the parts that raise questions to have conversations about these topics. Why is good beautiful and evil ugly? Does it have to be this way? Why are the princesses told that they must have a prince? How does Agatha protest this idea? This book is far more intelligent than readers may believe, and I would take advantage of the opportunity to explore some of the new things that the author is writing!I'll acknowledge that the book is not perfect. Others have commented that there are pacing issues, and I can agree with that. I also question the author's choice to include Arthurian elements here as the Arthurian legends are not fairy tales. He likely had a reason, but it made me raise my eyebrows. These things recognized, I would say that the book succeeds in more ways than people see at first glance.