Customer Reviews

Winter's Child (Once Upon a Time (Simon Pulse))

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Grace and Kai grew up hearing magical tales told by Grace's grandmother including that of the Winter Child - a girl forever frozen at the age of sixteen until she can right her mother's wrongs. But as Grace and Kai grow older they realize life is not a fairy tale and when tragedy strikes both of them at sixteen Kai wants to make their relationship more serious. But Grace longs to see the world before she settles down and, heartbroken, Kai follows the Winter Child. Now Grace will do the traveling she longs for as she sets out of find Kai and ends up finding her heart as well.

"Winter's Child" is an interesting, if somewhat uneven retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen". Author Cameron Dokey does an excellent job of making the novel feel like a fairy tale for teens - it has a narrator, the time period is vague (there are no cars and Grace is not allowed to wear pants) and there are plenty of fantasy elements. Dokey also does a good job of incorporating elements from "The Snow Queen" - including the shattered mirror; Kai going off with the Winter's Child (substitute for The Snow Queen); and Grace (Gerda in the original) meets many of the same characters as in The Snow Queen. Dokey adds a nice touch by having Grace's grandmother's last name be Andersen. "Winter's Child" is, fortunately, not nearly as scary as the original. Dokey uses four narrators: the nameless one at the beginning, Grace, the Winter's Child, and Kai, which works for the most part as we get to see each point of view, although Kai's narration gets lost in the shuffle and almost seems an afterthought. While the book works well for the most part, it falls apart towards the end when Dokey seems a bit pressed to have a happy ending for all and adds a fantasy element that should have been more developed - instead it comes out of nowhere and didn't quite work for me.

"Winter's Child" is an ambitious attempt to retell "The Snow Queen" for teenagers and while it doesn't quite work in the end it is still worth reading to see how cleverly the author incorporates details from the original into the new story.

Winter's Child by Cameron Dokey is part of the "Once Upon a Time" is Timeless series--a collection of fairy-tale retellings. This one by Dokey is a retelling of The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. The book begins with a typical fairy tale sounding exposition about how vanity led to the fragmentation of a family and created The Winter Child (née The Snow Queen) and her quest to heal all who have been touched by the curse her own father placed on a mirror. Kai and Grace are also present, neighbors and best of friends.

After the initial chapter the novel shifts into first person narratives, each of the major characters telling their part of the story. This literary effect is clearly used because the only way Dokey could tell all sides of the story without using third person was to shift from one person to another. Unfortunately, she doesn't make much effort to give each character his or her own voice or tonal mannerisms. Instead, the three characters sound very much alike and Dokey uses chapter headings as an affectation to differentiate for the reader which of the three is talking.

There are moments of poetry, occasional lines that are lovely to read. These are too far and few to add merit to the novel. Ultimately, this book reads like a Harlequin romance meets Hans Christian Andersen--a pleasant and completely provocative piece of fluff. Quickly read. Quickly forgotten.

Unlike Melinda Lo's Ash, a surprising and wonderful retelling of Cinderella, Winter's Child takes few risks and never rises to the promise of a retelling making this reader question why bother retelling the story at all if it isn't going to at least offer some surprise or contemporary merit?

I enjoy reading new takes on the classic fairytales that I grew up with (i.e. Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Step-Sister, The Child Thief and Godmother:The Secret Cinderella Story) so I was really looking forward to this retelling of Hans Christian Anderson's classic "The Snow Queen".

Rather than make the Snow Queen the villian she was in the original, the author portrays her as a young, vulnerable teenager, not unlike Grace and Kai. As a result, the new telling becomes the story of a love triangle and I'm okay with that because, after all, a "retelling" is all about taking the story in a new direction. What I'm not okay with is the way the love story resolves itself. This "happy ending" comes off as forced with the author pulling an enchanted prince out of her hat in the eleventh hour!

Tween girls may love this book, but most others will find it strays too far from the classic.

Kai and Grace have grown up next door and as best friends. Neither has had an easy life, and when they find themselves alone at 16 Kai suggests they should marry. Grace however, wants independence and freedom and rejects him. But that evening the Winter's Child shows up at Kai's window beckoning to him, and he leaves with her. When Grace discovers that he has gone, she realizes how much she loved him and sets off to find him.

This is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen," a fairy tale that isn't very commonly known. In spite of being another in what I often consider "pulp series," there are elements that are somewhat worthwhile. The writing is at times fairly good, and the idea of telling the story in first person from the three main characters was an interesting way of adding different perspectives. Unfortunately, there's little or no differentiation in style between each voice. Worse yet, it just wasn't interesting enough to keep my 10 year old daughter reading it. She finally finished it but only after interrupting it a couple times to read other books before unenthusiastically returning.

This book exceeded my expectations, which were admittedly low. As a young adult book in a series, I was expecting something on the level of Sweet Valley High fairy-tale style. The book delivered more. You might wonder why I chose to read it - well, my son's name is Kai.

I really liked all three of the main characters in this book. While Kai was serious and detail-oriented, Grace was adventurous and sometimes flighty. As friends, they are a perfect match. Grace challenges Kai to step outside the box, and he does - to her dismay. He leaves town with the winter child, a woman from fireside stories. She goes after him, risking her own life. In the process, she learns a lot about herself. This is a book about people finding themselves, as 16 year olds are wont to do.

This story would appeal to both boys and girls, I think. The girls are strong characters, but the boy is as well. There is an appropriate level of intimacy portrayed here, such that it would be appropriate for an advanced reader of younger years, such as a 3rd or 4th grader. Although it is a young adult book, none of the material is PG-13.

Grace and Kai have been best friends forever - how could they avoid it when they grew up next door to each other? They played together by day and in the evenings, Grace's grandmother would tell them legends about the Winter's Child, an immortal princess from the land of ice and snow cursed to undo the damage wrought upon the world when her mother smashed a cursed mirror filled with fear and released its damaging shards throughout the world. When the old woman dies, Grace and Kai have only each other for companionship, but Kai's marriage proposal - a perfectly logical step - is shot down by Grace's desire for freedom. When the Winter Child shows up, Kai eagerly decides to accompany her on her quest. Grace immediately sets out to follow them, and finally experiences the adventure she's been craving.

The book is set up into thirteen `stories,' following the format set forth in the original `Snow Queen'. Grace, Kai and Deidre the Winter's Child alternate as storytellers. The first half the book sets the stage very well; Deidre's life is told in the fantastic style of fairy tales while Grace and Kai live in a gritty poverty. The Christian elements of Andersen's tale have been removed, too, grounding Kai and Grace in a difficult world with little hope of divine intervention. But it gets a little awkward around Kai's departure, because the Winter Child is a radical departure from the Snow Queen. Whereas the Snow Queen is a beautiful enigma whose motivations are known only to herself, Deidre is a teenager who has been lonely for many years, trapped in her sixteenth year until her quest is complete. She acts just like a teenage girl with her first crush. She's giddy, she's hopeful...she's not sad. Over and over, we're told her name is `Sorrow' and that names match their owners perfectly, but she rarely seems as icy or as unhappy as we're told she is.

When Grace is following Kai and the Winter's Child, the story gets a little disconnected. An old woman tries to distract her, and she is captured by a band of thieves. These are both part of the original tale, so they had to be included, but we rush through the scenes so quickly that it feels like they were added to complete a checklist of important points from `The Snow Queen'. The ending, too, wraps up too quickly and too neatly, with a last-minute character addition to `fix' the developing love triangle.

This is the first book I've read in the `Once Upon a Time' series, and it intrigues me enough that I want to check out more of the series. Although the plot has its weak points, `Winter's Child' is true to the fairy tale genre and a fun way to re-imagine `The Snow Queen'.

Cameron Dokey has respun plenty of fairy tales, whether she added a new twist or fleshed out undeveloped characters of a well-known story. But "Winter's Child," a retelling of the classic story of the Snow Queen, basically falls flat on its face -- while her style is exquisite and the story starts off strong, everything starts unraveling by the middle of the book.

As children, Kai and Grace were told the story of the Winter Child -- Deirdre, a princess snatched up and dropped by the North Wind, and left with a shard of icy mirror in her heart. But as the friends grow up together, they start suffering the loss of their loved ones -- his father, then his mother and her beloved Oma. With no one left for either of them, Kai proposes to his beloved friend... and she refuses him, because she wants to experience the world.

But a disgruntled Kai vanishes that night when the Winter Child appears at his window, and Grace regrets her selfish decision. She sets out across the snowy mountains to find the icy palace where the Winter Child began her long journey to heal injured hearts like her own -- but she has some terrible obstacles to overcome. And what feelings do both Deidre and Grace have for Kai?

"Winter's Child" is one of those stories that starts off strong with a unique twist (the "Snow Queen" is a cursed immortal teenager), but runs out of gas quickly. It starts off strong with the ethereal fairy tales of how the Winter Child came to be, and the grittier story of a free-spirited girl and her down-to-earth, loving best friend. Coal mines, stitchwork, and frost on the windows -- Dokey's beautiful writing brings it to life.

But the plot starts falling apart after Kai leaves -- Grace goes wandering off and gets accosted by a bandit girl and a crazy old lady on her way to the castle. These little interludes don't have any plot purpose, and don't really teach anything -- they exist apparently because Dokey needed to flesh out the otherwise sparse storyline, so Grace wouldn't get to her destination too fast.

And the final act is an exercise in confusion and disappointment. It seems like Dokey had no idea what to do, so she just did anything to wrap it up: characters' attitudes do complete 180's, the central Big Life Lesson is forgotten (making Grace's character development pointless), and the love triangle is handled far too slickly and conveniently. Eleventh-hour instant soulmates popping up just when they're needed is always a bad thing.

Grace is perhaps the most intriguing character of the story, since her love for Kai is at war with her adventurous nature -- and over the course of the book, she finds that the wide world isn't quite as nice as she thought. Unfortunately Deirdre is handled rather clumsily: though she's ageless, supposedly loveless and has drifted alone through the world, she acts like just an emo teenager.

"Winter's Child has plenty of ideas, but unfortunately the story is too short for the book -- and Cameron Dokey loses her grip on it by the time the climax rolls around. Only for completists.

This is one of my favorite stories growing up and while there are lots of retellings of other fairy tales, the Snow Queen often gets set aside. This wasn't a bad version, but I'd call it a more "re-imagining" rather than retelling. I felt there was not enough in this book that connected back to the original story and it did have a sort of disbursed feeling. I had to go back several times to make sure I was following the right thread of the story. Also - this is a minor annoyance - but why Grace rather than Gerda? The author kept Kai's name the same, so why not hers?

Although I'm familiar with many of Hans Christian Andersen's stories, I've never been acquainted with "The Snow Queen". I've loved many of his fairy tales, from "The Little Mermaid" to "The Emperor's New Clothes." Unfortunately, Cameron Dokey doesn't give me much motivation to pursue the Snow Queen story in her retelling, "Winter's Child".

Using many, but not all of Andersen's original elements, Dokey didn't draw me into this fictional world very well. Never once did I find myself getting lost in the story. It was difficult to get immersed in the world of the Winter Child, especially when the story kept shifting it's perspective between the three main characters. This may have been a writing device that Andersen used, but it doesn't work well here. Cameron's writing is quite weak and forgettable. If I needed to put the book down, upon returning to it I frequently forgot where I was in the story.

I understand this is a YA book, designed for 9-12 year olds, but this 38 year-old has read many YA's in recent years that are of much higher quality than this one. It's a small paperback, printed on cheap paper that hearkens back to fluffy romance novels, without all the tawdry romance. The story is harmless and sweet, but if you have other quality novels on hand, don't waste your time with this one.

While WINTER'S CHILD is an easy, entertaining read, it does suffer from some short-comings. I realize that this book is not only about the Winter Child, but about how many different stories come together to make up one complete story, but there were one or two that were unnecessary to the plot as a whole. At around the three-fourths point, I was taken aback by the story going into a completely different direction than where I had hoped. This is where my main problem lays. Had some of the extra storylines been taken out and replaced with more of the development of the main plot and characters, I believe I would have been happier and completely fine with how everything turned out. Sadly, I ended up feeling somewhat cheated with the end and left unsatisfied. However, the first one-hundred pages are magical and beautifully written, and show everything I love about Cameron Dokey's work. Too bad it had to start high and then end on a low note.