May Bird and the Ever After, Book #1 [Paperback]

Jodi Lynn Anderson (Author), Leonid Gore (Illustrator)

Book Description

Release date: May 23, 2006 | Age Range: 10 and up | Series: May Bird (Book 1)

Most people aren't very comfortable in the woods, but the woods of Briery Swamp fit May Bird like a fuzzy mitten. There, she is safe from school and the taunts and teases of kids who don't understand her. Hidden in the trees, May is a warrior princess, and her cat, Somber Kitty, is her brave guardian.

Then May falls into the lake.

When she crawls out, May finds herself in a world that most certainly does not feel like a fuzzy mitten. In fact it is a place few living people have ever seen. Here, towns glow blue beneath zipping stars and the people -- people? -- walk through walls. Here the Book of the Dead holds the answers to everything in the universe. And here, if May is discovered, the horrifyingly evil Bo Cleevil will turn her into nothing.

May Bird must get out.

Fast.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-7–May has grown up in an isolated home next to Briery Swamp. Her only real friend is her pet cat, Somber Kitty. When she digs through the rubble of a ruined post office, she finds a letter with her name on it. It tells her to travel through the woods to a lake. When she gets there, she accidentally falls into the water, which changes her life. After she returns home, she discovers that she can now see ghosts, and that they are all around her. May returns to the eerie spot in the middle of the night and is dragged down into the lake, which is actually a portal to the Ever After, where all dead people go as well as ghosts, specters, and other spirits. This alternative world is filled with vivid characters, including Pumpkin, the shy ghost who has watched over May since she was a child. The protagonist is sent on a quest to find a book that will tell her what her future is and whether she can get back home. The setting of the book is confusing. Even the early part set in the normal world is not cohesive, but it becomes even less convincing in the Ever After. Character motivation is also an issue, because May chooses to return to the lake and then fights through the entire book to escape what she has found. This is a secondary purchase compared to other vivid fantasy works like those created by Cornelia Funke.–Tasha Saecker, Caestecker Public Library, Green Lake, WI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Gr. 4-7. Everything about 10-year-old May is odd: she lives at the edge of a deserted town; she's a shy misfit who hasn't a clue about making friends; and her cat is an outlandish-looking hairless rex. But not even May's worried mother knows ghosts are haunting May. After a mysterious letter lures her to a frightening world of the dead, May must find the courage to outwit the bizarre creatures hunting her and discover why she has been summoned to Ever After. This could easily have been just another formulaic story of a loner on a quest who learns how to love and lives happily ever after, but it's not. Anderson sets the unsettling, nightmarish tone of her offbeat fantasy in the first paragraph, then compounds the horror chapter after scary chapter (think Garth Nix's Sabriel, with a leavening of humor). The first of a trilogy, this book leaves loads of tantalizing, unanswered questions. Kids will love it all the same, but warn them not to read it at bedtime. Chris Sherman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Age Range: 10 and up
  
• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Aladdin (May 23, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 141690607X
• ISBN-13: 978-1416906070
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #129,258 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Not for scaredy cats September 2, 2006

By Amanda Richards HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is young adult fantasy with a difference. May Ellen Bird is the school weirdo who lives near the woods of Briery Swamp, West Virginia, a place that has lost seventeen people to mysterious causes. Her only friend is her bald, ugly cat; a hairless Rex named Somber Kitty. You can see right away that this is no cute kid and kitty story, and if you get bad dreams if you even read the word "Boogeyman", look no further.

May likes to go snooping around in old buildings looking for treasure, and one day she finds a hidden letter dating back to 1951, which somehow has her name on it. The envelope contains a letter and a map, and soon May is setting off across the Endless Briers towards a supposedly non-existent lake. Naturally she finds the lake, and falls in, and when she gets out she can see dead people, supposedly with her new-found sixth sense. For some reason she returns to the lake, and enters the Ever After, filled with ghosts, specters and other nasty things that go bump in the night.

Assisted by her ghostly guardian, Pumpkin, she embarks on a quest to find the Book of the Dead, which is supposed to tell her how to get home again, as well as the meaning of life and everything else, but to get it she must escape the clutches of the evil Bo Cleevil, his pal the Boogeyman and his dogs, and the gross ghouls who guard the book.

Confusing in places, gross in others, but highly imaginative, this one is for kids with slightly morbid tendencies.

Amanda Richards, September 2, 2006

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Ghoulishly Good Read September 27, 2005

By The Careful Collector

Format:Hardcover

May Bird is a skinny, knobby kneed girl with no friends and a hairless cat. Her mother wants to take her from her beloved woods in the hills of West Virginia to a boarding school in New York City. One day May finds a letter, a call for help that changes her life. As May is drawn into the Ever After she discovers many things, not the least of which is friends.

This book is dark, and, perhaps for small children, a bit frightening; it is also touching, and at times, funny. The pace is lively, the dangers are immense, and the ending is wonderful. Enjoy

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The land of Ever After is ever exciting!! November 10, 2005

By S. E. Johnson

Format:Hardcover

I knew when I bought this book I'd love it! I actually just finished it today and hated it was over. I was kind of surprised about the ending. I thought it would of ended differently. I knew it was a series but I thought she'd make it home and then travel back to Ever After like the Dorothy in the original Oz book series. But this is good to because it makes you eager for the next book. This book is a complete mix of Tim Burton's Beetlejuice and the original Oz book series. She meets all sorts of crazy characters that you'll love. Mary Bird is a skinny shy loner who is literally dragged into the portal to the Ever After world of the dead. She has to be very careful because if she's discovered Bogeyman will come with his great black dogs. "Live ones" are forbidden to enter you see. She goes on a crazy adventure in order to get home before evil Bo Cleevil get's ahold of her. This book is stuffed with creativity and excitement. I was anxious, surprised and grossed out while reading, it was great fun! :) I think it would make a great movie!