Padma Wulandari

Mihi Ever After (Mihi Ever After, 1)

Book by Tae Keller

DETAILS

Publisher : Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) (November 8, 2022) Language : English Hardcover : 240 pages ISBN-10 : 1250814316 ISBN-13 : 978-1250814319 Reading age : 8 - 12 years Grade level : 4 - 6 Item Weight : 10.6 ounces , Newbery Medalist Tae Keller and illustrator Geraldine Rodríguez deliver a middle grade fantasy adventure in Mihi Ever After about three girls who fall into a fairy tale world. Should they stay forever, or find a way to escape? Mihi Whan Park loves fairy tales. She wants to be a princess more than anything, but everyone tells her she’s not the princess type. Then Mihi gets her shot: When she and her new friends Savannah and Reese discover a portal to a fairy tale realm, they get a chance to learn how to be princesses! But the fairy tale world turns out not to be the wonderful place Mihi imagined. Soon, Savannah and Reese decide they’re ready to go home, and Mihi has to decide where her loyalties lie: With her friends and her future at home, or with her princess dreams? "Keller leans into the power of fairy tales, friendship, and self-acceptance via this quickly paced fantasy."― Publishers Weekly Read more

REVIEW

Recently I've read a bunch of fairy tale retellings. (Thank you, Marissa Meyer!) Tae Keller's Mihi Ever After made a refreshing change. In it, as the publisher tells us, Mihi and her new friends Savannah and Reese discover a portal to a fairy tale realm, and they get a chance to learn how to be princesses. If you were in the business of collecting fairy tale realms found in portal fantasy, you would judge this a fairly typical one. What happens there, though, is not. Keller won a Newbery Medal for her novel When You Trap a Tiger. (Thus, the "Winner of the Newbery Medal" notation on the cover of Mihi Ever After accurately refers to author Tae Keller. The publishers are obviously being a little sneaky here, hoping you'll think this book is a Newbery Medalist.) When You Trap a Tiger fully deserves the honor -- it's an entrancing tale that combines Korean folklore with a real-life story. But perhaps the most interesting part to me was Keller's Author's Note, in which she describes how her Halmoni (that's grandmother -- 할머니) told her stories of ghosts and tigers. When later in life she looked up these old Korean stories, she couldn't find her Halmoni's stories. "Maybe my halmoni had told different versions, and invented some entirely." Thus Keller was launched on her career of literary crime: making new fairy tales. As I wrote in my review of Tiger, "Keller respects and reveres her Korean heritage. However, she is also aware that in Korean culture women and girls are traditionally kept quiet and off-stage. ... In the Author's Note, Keller explains how she came to see the Tiger as a symbol of a girl's freedom. Thus the book combines respect for Korean tradition with a kind of rebellion against it." That, making fairy tales anew, is what Mihi Ever After is about. And if I gave any more detail, I would spoil it, so I'll leave it at that.

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