Power Princesses: Briar and Rose and Jack by Katherine Coville

All Queen Mervyn has ever wanted is about to come to pass in the birth of this long-awaited child. Only one wise woman is allowed to attend the Queen, an unsightly crone named Hilde--part wise woman, part midwife, and. some say, part fairy.

The time is at hand. Outside the chamber, King Warrick hears a lusty cry. "At last," cries the king. "An heir!"

But within the chamber, Hilde trembles, feeling a surging sympathy for the infant even as her heart sinks. She places the baby in Queen Mervyn's arms. The Queen draws back the blanket and gasps. The infant has a protruding brow, a sagging eyelid, and coarse, asymmetrical features. But something happens. The ugly little face breaks into a smile. The queen is charmed. "Ahh, the sweet little thing!" she says.

But almost immediately a second daughter is born, this one with an unearthly beauty even as a newborn, and to please the King, the Queen and Hilde decide to name her Rose and to present the beautiful child as the rightful heir. Hilde names the real firstborn Briar and agrees to raise her as an orphaned child of neighboring nobles. At their christening the Fairy Queen grants Rose lifelong beauty and charm, and by Hilde's intervention, Briar is given strength and intelligence. And then the jealous Gray Fairy intervenes with a curse on Rose, that on her sixteenth birthday the prick of a spindle will cause her to sleep for a hundred years, to be wakened only by the kiss of a true love.

The two secret sisters spend all their time together as they grow and delight in slipping away from the castle to play in the forest near the village, where they befriend the struggling Mother Mudge and her son Jack. The village peasants never seem to have enough to eat because of the Giant Tax, levied by the King to buy off the Evil Giant whose raids become ever more greedy. Despite the fearful giant, however, the three children become loyal friends and swear an oath that together, as the "Giant Killers," they will someday save the kingdom.

But sweet-natured Rose, accustomed to being loved by all, is easily misled by the "mean girls" of the court, Lady Arabella and her minions, who play cruel pranks on Briar, excluding her from their fun, and Briar finds herself turning more and more to Mother Mudge and Jack for companionship, where she resolves to save the half-starved villagers from the King's oppressive Giant Tax. And then she overhears the King telling the Queen that to save their secret fortune and their kingdom he must compel Rose to marry the old and cruel King Udolf. And when Briar tells Rose about the marriage being arranged for her, Rose chooses the prick of the spindle for herself rather than face the fate her father requires of her, and Briar realizes that she alone has the love and loyalty to save her sister.

In Katherine Coville's forthcoming Briar and Rose and Jack (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Clarion, 2019), the tales of Sleeping Beauty and Jack and the Beanstalk come together in a fantasy novel set within a folkloric medieval framework which affirms the power of courage, friendship, and love to overcome the magic of evil. As in her earlier fractured fairy story, The Cottage in the Woods, which mixes a classic Jane Austen story with the classic Goldilocks setting, in her new novel for savvy middle readers Coville introduces into the old tale of "spell-binding" and true love a modern sense of personal and social responsibility in the face of corruption, greed, and evil.

Under the Sea: The Mermaid by Jan Brett

UNDER THE SEA, THE OCTOPUS FAMILY GOT READY FOR A SWIM BEFORE BREAKFAST.

Baby Octopus's floppy hat is clamped firmly down on his head, as Mama Okasan and Papa Otosan leave their meal waiting inside the cozy undersea house and set out for their morning constitutional. But their home soon has an unexpected visitor.

A dark-tressed mermaid, Kinira, soon swims by, with her pet pufferfish Puffy, and she has no compunctions about swimming uninvited into the lovely little shell house.

"TAKE CARE!" PUFFY WARNED. "YOU NEVER KNOW WHO MAY LIVE THERE!"

But Kinira is enchanted by the little house, especially the meal set forth, with three charming shell plates waiting for someone. She tries the food on the biggest shell, but quickly finds it too crunchy. The second breakfast is seriously slimy! But Kinira pronounces the food on the smallest shell perfectly pleasing.

"JUST RIGHT!"

Despite Puffy's cautions, Kinira tries out the chairs in the sitting room, breaking the smallest shell seat. Still undeterred, she swims into the bedroom, where she spots the sweetest and the smallest sleeping shell and curls up inside for a nap.

By this point, savvy kids will know exactly where this story is going, in noted author-illustrator Jan Brett's latest, The Mermaid(G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2017). As she did in her best-selling The Three Snow Bears, which also takes the familiar folktale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears out for another walk around the literary block, Brett provides a unique setting in a re-imagined version inspired by the undersea world around the Pacific island of Okinawa. Brett's heroine is an appropriately Asian mermaid, not with golden locks, but a golden crown which she leaves behind for Baby Octopus in a visually delightful re-creation of the beloved story of the intrepid young home invader. Children will giggle as Baby Octopus delivers his big line--along the lines of "Somebody's been crunching my crustaceans!" and they will cheer as the loyal Puffy pokes away at his sleeping mistress, waking her just in time to make her getaway, dodging the 24 outreaching tentacles and leaving behind her tiara as a consolation for Baby Octopus.

Brett's elegant artwork, done with touches of Japanese style and deliciously delicate colorization, is, as always, the centerpiece of the story, not to mention her trademark frames around each page, which reveal additional details of the story. Author-illustrator Brett is at the top of her game in this resplendent new picture book. As School Library Journal says sagely, "... readers could spend hours diving into all there is to explore. A one-on-one treat for folktale aficionados and, of course, for Brett's many fans."