Blog Tour: First Frost by Liz DeJesus

Welcome to my stop on the First Frost Blog Tour.  I'm pleased to be able to share an excerpt from this exciting fairy-tale-based story. First, the synopsis:

FIRST FROST
by Liz DeJesus
Musa Publishing, 2012
Grades 7 and up

Fairy tales aren’t real…yeah…that’s exactly what Bianca thought. She was wrong.

For generations, the Frost family has run the Museum of Magical and Rare Artifacts, handing down guardianship from mother to daughter, always keeping their secrets to “family only.”

Gathered within museum’s walls is a collection dedicated to the Grimm fairy tales and to the rare items the family has acquired: Cinderella’s glass slipper, Snow White’s poisoned apple, the evil queen’s magic mirror, Sleeping Beauty’s enchanted spinning wheel…

Seventeen-year-old Bianca Frost wants none of it, dreaming instead of a career in art or photography or…well, anything except working in the family’s museum. She knows the items in the glass display cases are fakes because, of course, magic doesn’t really exist.

She’s about to find out how wrong she is.

My Thoughts:

While there are many books being published these days involving fairy tales and fairy tale characters, this one stands out. I loved the idea of the museum, I think it would be great to see all sorts of artifacts from all sorts of different fairy tales, and perhaps even use some of them the way Bianca does. Not that I'd want to face an evil witch the way Bianca and her mother do. Bianca and Rose are great characters, I enjoyed watching Bianca grow from a bored, quiet young lady into a strong, magical young woman.  I thought the way the different fairy tales appeared briefly was entertaining and different than I've read anywhere else. I recommend this book to any who enjoy a good fairy tale. Note: There is a moderate amount of violence as well as profanity, but only a mild amount of kissing.

Author Liz DeJesus has stopped by today for with an excerpt for the First Frost Blog Tour!

Chapter Five

At eight o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, mother and daughter opened the doors at the museum. Bianca’s life had been altered in one day. She was glad she had all day Monday to sit and let everything sink in. It was hard for her to look at the items in the museum the same way. Would putting on Cinderella’s glass slipper make her want to dance? Would pricking her finger on the spinning wheel cause her to go to sleep for one hundred years? What about Snow White’s apple? Was it even real? If so…was it really poisoned?

 All this stuff is real. She went from not believing in magic to being completely surrounded by every magical item known (or unknown) in the fairy tale world. 

Then she thought about the things in the Wicked Wing. Her ice blue eyes widened in horror as she went through the list of the items in that particular room. 

The oven from Hansel and Gretel. 

The spinning wheel from Sleeping Beauty. 

The Red Dancing Shoes. 

Another spinning wheel from Rumplestiltskin, the one he used to turn the straw into gold. 

A golden cage with a fake nightingale inside; it was the one from the story Jorinde and Joringel. 

The evil queen’s magic mirror. What is that thing even doing on display? Bianca wondered as she walked past it.  

Oh, my God! Those things are real! Bianca tried not to freak out in the middle of the museum while there were people roaming around. She plastered a big fake smile on her face as she walked around the museum in search for her mother. She checked the gift shop — not there. She went upstairs, hoping Rose would be in her office. 

“Not here,” she muttered as she opened the door and found the chair behind her desk empty. Her face hurt from smiling so much. She rubbed her cheeks as she walked down the stairs. She let out a sigh of relief when she found her mother in the art gallery. She was struggling with a twenty-four by thirty-six frame with a painting of a mermaid lovingly gazing at an unconscious sailor. It was all done in pencil and a series of blue and green markers. Bianca was always blown away with the art that had been collected in this room. A lot of the paintings in the gallery were done by local artists. And some of the artwork was reprints of famous illustrations from popular artists like Arthur Rackham, W. Heath Robinson, and John Tenniel. 

“Mom?” she whispered. 

“Yes?” Rose grunted as she balanced the heavy frame in her hands. 

“This stuff is real.” 

“Yeah, I know,” she replied as she looked behind the frame and tried to line up the wire hanger to the nail on the wall. 

“No…Mom. I mean…this is real,” Bianca repeated her words slowly. 

“Ah, I see where this is going.” Rose smiled. She carefully let go of the frame and stepped back to make sure it was straight. “Don’t worry, a lot of this stuff is harmless, but maybe I’ll give you the unofficial tour once we’re closed.” 

 “That would be great.” 

“Does it look straight to you?” Rose asked.

Bianca tilted her head left and right as she studied the newly framed piece of art. “It looks good to me,” she replied.

“Works for me.”  

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