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Apr 30, 2020IndyPL_CarrieS rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Kelly Barnhill has a gift for storytelling. She sucks you right in to her weird and charming worlds. Lonely princesses, dragons and even ever-changing castles are not new ideas, but Barnhill tells them in a fresh way. This seems a perfect fairy tale for the age of social media. This story is set in a kingdom totally unlike our world, but basic human nature remains the same. Characters are manipulated both by suggestions that their deepest fears about themselves are really true - a real princess should be beautiful - or, through flattery that tells you all the things you want to hear. For me, it mirrored the way social media can feed into self-doubt or self-absorption, and how hard it can be to tell truth from lies. My family listened to the audio version together on a car trip and the story is engaging on a surface level - it's just a great, fun story - but also lead to some deeper conversations with my tweens about putting too much value on what other people think of you.