Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I really wanted to love this book but I just found the story line to be lackluster in its objective and the language a bit pretentious for "young readers" until...maybe the last 50 pages. Because I run book fairs at our local elementary school, I preview a lot of elementary school level children's books. I am always looking for books to give as gifts for the kids in my life. Since I am limited to the variety of books at the book fairs, I get many books from Amazon. I was immediately intrigued by the reviews of The Girl Who... as I was looking for a great fantasy fiction depicting a strong female character for my preteen nieces. From the reviews, it looked like this was the book to get. In addition, the title of the book peaked my curiousity and the wonderful illustrations were also quite capitvating. Unfortunately, after finally getting through this book, I must say that I was somewhat disappointed and thought I should write a review for those adults who might mistakenly get this book for a young reader based on the high accolades of the other reviewers. This book is listed for readers aged 10+, I find it difficult to recommend this book for a young reader less than 14 or 15 years old. While exuberantly written (and often way overdone), the prose is based on concepts that are, I believe, far beyond the life experiences or understanding of young girls to even grasp the ideas that the author is trying to convey. Even above average 12 year old would find it difficult to envision someone wearing a smoking jacket, carriage-driver's cloak and jodhpurs. In addition, it might be unlikely that an average young reader understand the concepts of "diplomatic immunity" and "These laws are sacrosanct, except for visiting dignitaries..." or know what the word "exeunt" might mean. These notions complicated with the ambitious descriptive writing style that convolutes nouns into verbs and verbs into adjectives and so on makes for very slow and confusing reading. To top it off, the aforementioned was packed in the very first chapter of only 10 pages! I would bet that most preteen readers would not venture any further past the first chapter or two of this book for fear that it would feel like homework or a chore because you have to research the meaning of at least 15 words or concepts in every chapter! Yes, this fairytale is very Alice in Wonderland-ish or Wizard of Oz-ish and there is even a Narnia-ish other-world-connecting wardrobe closet mentioned, but the story doesn't mesmerize the reader like the other original fairytales do. In fact, the story plods along with its overly embellished descriptives to the point of lulling you to sleep. Often the adventures of the main character were non-conclusive to the importance of the plot which made it a bit annoying. Comments by other reviewers said this was a "modern" fairytale--uh, no, not really as the language is old fashioned and the timeline is during World War II. I don't even think most young kids know what a black and white news reel is as mentioned when the main character goes to a movie theatre. The storyline (if you call it that) just rambled on in a chaotic fashion where no goal seemed to unfold until, as mentioned, the last 50 pages or so. The book is only 247 pages! If it wasn't for the fact that I was giving this as a gift to my nieces, I would have stopped reading it long before. I kept going back online to reread the reviews thinking I missed something and just couldn't believe that my opinion was so far off on the other end of the spectrum of opinions about this book. So, I kept reading because, as I mentioned, I really wanted to love this book as others did... After going back and forth with wanting to love it and didn't, in the end, I gave this book a 2 star rating because I couldn't give it 2 and a half. Three stars seemed to be too generous for me even though I thought the last part of the book was somewhat enjoyable. If you are looking for a style of writing to study in a high school language arts/literature class, then this book might be interesting to analyze. The story line is not very inventive as Valente` manages to use almost every kind of character type and concept models invented by previous authors/storytellers. Finally, I must reiterate that "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairland..." is definitely not geared towards young readers.