Fran: U is for Ursu

I had some trouble finding a "U"--the public library is heavy on John Updike and Leon Uris, two authors I had read before, didn't feel particularly connected to, and whose rows of books make it feel daunting to pick just one.  I went to the teen room and found Anne Ursu's book, Breadcrumbs.

Hazel is best friends with Jack as they enter their 5th grade year.  Both children are undergoing serious life events at home (Hazel's father has left and her parents divorced; Jack's mother is severely depressed and dysfunctional as a result).  Additionally, they are feeling the pressure of gender conformity in school, especially on their friendship.  Against this backdrop of very real tween life, is the magic of fairy tale worlds--an imp with a distorting mirror that breaks creates an event that makes Jack look to the Snow Queen (who lures him from his world to hers), the Snow Queen herself, shoes that cause the dancer to dance to death, animal skins that transform the wearer, wizards, witches, transformed children.  Hazel braves the forest and the magic to bring Jack home.

There is much that is lovely in this book.  Hazel is an Indian, adopted by a white family; she is aware of her difference because of the emphasis placed on it by those around her.  Ursu is aware of the shifts in perception as we understand some of these things for the first time.  Describing an assignment Hazel is given in school, Ursu writes:

Hazel stared at the paint-splotted table in front of her.  There was a time when she would have loved this assignment, when she had a thousand made-up places at her fingertips just waiting for someone to ask to see them.  But now she could think of nothing.  There were so many real places in the world,  and they had so much weight to them.  There were front hallways and bus stops and the space on the other side of classroom doors.  There were lonely big slides and microscopically out of line desks and lunch tables that survived gravity shifts. How could anyone ever make something up?

The magic of fairy tales is meant to feel real, in a sinister Brothers Grimm way--especially because for Ursu and her characters, fairy tales are about longing.  About being given your heart's desire and how it changes you; about longing that drives us on incredible quests and drives us to continue against odds.  And how desires sometimes drive us to want more, remaining always unfulfilled.  And--I suppose--how the ways in which fairy tale desires relate to our real world desires and drive us back older, sadder, wiser but better able to see the positives in our own lives.

There are some issues--these themes of longing and desire/real world vs. fairy world aren't always intermeshed as well as they might be.  The first half of the book feels short on magic whereas the second half feels short on reality; I wanted more integration of the two.  Reading as an adult, the references to fairy tales in the non-magic part ("like Narnia") were more annoying; I assume a tween audience might need more of the markers to indicate connections.  Illustrations are balanced in both halves of the book but felt weighted to the magic half. 

On the whole, however, a quick read with much to recommend it!