About this item
National Book Award Longlist2014 Bank Street Childrens Book Committee Best Book of the YearBeautifully written and elegantly structured, this fantasy is as real as it gets.Franny Billingsley, author of ChimeThe Real Boy, Anne Ursus follow-up to her widely acclaimed and beloved middle grade fantasy Breadcrumbs, is a spellbinding tale of the power we all wield, great and small.On an island on the edge of an immense sea there is a city, a forest, and a boy named Oscar. Oscar is a shop boy for the most powerful magician in the village, and spends his days in a small room in the dark cellar of his masters shop grinding herbs and dreaming of the wizards who once lived on the island generations ago. Oscars world is small, but he likes it that way. The real world is vast, strange, and unpredictable.
About the Author
Anne Ursu's most recent book is BREADCRUMBS (HarperCollins/Walden Pond Press) , a modern-day fairy tale for middle grade readers. Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen," BREADCRUMBS is a story of a Minneapolis girl who follows her best friend into a strange fairy-tale woods, and discovers there that fantasy is no escape. Anne is also the author of the Cronus Chronicles (Atheneum) , a middle grade fantasy trilogy about two cousins who unwittingly fall into a battle with Greek gods. The three books are THE SHADOW THIEVES, THE SIREN SONG, and THE IMMORTAL FIRE. In addition, she has written two novels for adults: SPILLING CLARENCE and THE DISAPPARATION OF JAMES (Hyperion) . She teaches at the Hamline University's Masters of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Anne lives in Minneapolis with her young son and neurotic cats.
