The Stolen Slippers: The Chronicles of Never After, Book 2

Parents need to know that The Stolen Slippers is the second book in Melissa de la Cruz's Never After series featuring imaginative, adventurous reinventions of well-known fairy tales. Bookish, bullied, 12-year-old adoptee Filomena Jefferson-Cho of North Pasadena, who's always taken comfort in a fantasy series set in the land of Never After, found herself transported there in Book 1. And while there, she discovered that her relationship with the stories, the place, and the characters went well beyond fangirl. In this episode, we learn along with Filomena that everything we know about Cinderella is wrong, wrong, wrong. Not only is she a spoiled brat, but also her so-called wicked stepsisters are the perfectly delightful cousins of Filomena's friend Gretel (of "Hansel and..."), and one of them is the rightful owner of the glass slippers, made by Gretel's uncle. It's complicated, but long story short, if the version of the Cinderella story we all know is allowed to unfold, the ogre conquest of Never After will be complete. Also true loves will be lost. There's a lot of hacking, slashing, stabbing, swordplay, devouring, and other mayhem. In one scene, Filomena and friends, including Gretel, stuff the ogre who was planning to roast them into the oven instead. Characters are killed -- and often return to life. Friendship, family, teamwork, loyalty, and creative thinking are strong themes. The cast is diverse, with girls and women (good and evil) dominating the action; important characters are Black and Korean; and there's a lot of detail about Korean food and culture. Along the way, readers get vocabulary-building phrases like "pinnacle of pulchritude and perfection."