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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Larson, M. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | J Fic Larson, M. 2014 v.1 | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Salem Main Library | J Larson, M. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Willamina Public Library | JF LARSON | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Set in Grimm's fairytale world, M.A. Larson's Pennyroyal Academy masterfully combines adventure, humor, and magical mischief--perfect for fans of The School for Good and Evil .
Pennyroyal Academy: Seeking bold, courageous youths to become tomorrow's princesses and knights... Come one, come all!
A girl from the forest arrives in a bustling kingdom with no name and no idea why she is there, only to find herself at the center of a world at war. She enlists at Pennyroyal Academy, where princesses and knights are trained to battle the two great menaces of the day: witches and dragons. There, given the name "Evie," she must endure a harsh training regimen under the steel glare of her Fairy Drillsergeant, while also navigating an entirely new world of friends and enemies. As Evie learns what it truly means to be a princess, she realizes surprising things about herself and her family, about human compassion and inhuman cruelty. And with the witch forces moving nearer, she discovers that the war between princesses and witches is much more personal than she could ever have imagined.
Author Notes
M.A. Larson is a film and television writer who lives with his wife, daughters, and two dogs in a canyon in California. Larson has written for Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, Disney XD, Disney UK, Discovery Kids Channel, The Hub, and Nickelodeon. As a writer on the cult sensation My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic , he has been a guest at "brony" fan conventions from Paris, France to Dallas, Texas. This is his first novel. Larson can be found on twitter at @M_A_Larson, where he frequently tweets about classic films and magical candy-colored ponies.
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-Pennyroyal Academy trains princesses and knights to battle the witches and dragons that encroach ever more rapidly on the kingdom's citizens. Cadet Eleven (Evie) does not know her name and fears sharing her past, but she desperately wants to succeed as a princess recruit. As she journeys to the Academy to enroll, she escapes a witch's clutches with the help of knight-in-training Remington, a boy who annoys and intrigues Evie. Once arrived, the heroine makes friends in her unit who support her through the Academy's trials despite the malevolent tricks of Malora, a princess candidate whose nastiness puzzles the protagonist. The Academy's final wilderness challenge forces Evie to face her fears and her past.ÅThe intriguing premise of Larson's first novel falters under uneven execution. Fantasy readers will indubitably relish the magical kingdom's fearsome witches and dragons, set in an enchanted landscape of pitfalls and beauties. The assigned challenges add a perilous element that advances the story's pacing. However, the way Larson reveals Evie's past is nothing short of confusing. Readers unravel the protagonist's backstory over time, but Larson's purposeful inconsistencies seem bungled rather than cleverly diverting. Erratic characterizations lead to mercurial behavior and odd comings and goings. Most awkward are the abrupt transitions from one scene to the next. The story lacks a narrative flow, making baffling jumps that leave events unconnected. Adventure fantasy readers would be better off with a Shannon Hale novel or Michael Buckley's "Sisters Grimm" series (Abrams).-Caitlin Augusta, Stratford Library Association, CT (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Pennyroyal Academy is no place for a damsel in distress. Inside the boot camp-style training ground, Princesses of the Shield learn to harness the power of "courage, compassion, kindness, and discipline" to battle witches and other foes. Their greatest weapon is in knowing themselves, a difficult task for Evie, who stumbles into her first day without a name, a royal bloodline, or even a proper dress. First-time author Larson, a film and TV writer, uses strikingly crisp imagery to tell a coming-of-age story rounded out with a gaggle of fast-won friends who provide support and comic relief-like Basil, a boy whose mother so badly wanted a girl he was sent to become a princess instead of a knight. The author playfully nods to classic fairy tales, incorporating a Frog Prince, a witchy stepmother, and a jealous stepsister tearing a ball gown to tatters, but he also imbues the fantasy with an important, affirming message for readers: "You get to decide what you want to be. No one else." Ages 10-up. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, ICM. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Returning to Pennyroyal Academy for her second year of training, Princess Cadet Evie encounters a group of failed former cadets who want to burn down the Academy. Can she convince others at school of the threat? This sequel doesn't recap the complicated premise of Pennyroyal Academy, leaving some readers potentially adrift, but for established fans, the action and magical adventure are first rate. (c) Copyright 2017. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Larson weaves a patchwork mix of trite and truly excellent ideas into this chronicle of a young fugitive's first year at princess school. Having neither name nor past and first met racing through an enchanted forest clad only in spider webs, "Cadet Eleven" (Evie for short) finds herself enrolled in a school for combat princesses after rescuing hunky prince Remington from a witch's cage. Under the tutelage of a tiny but fierce Fairy Drillsergeant and other faculty, she learns how to fight witches with "Courage, Compassion, Kindness, and Discipline," along with ball-gown tailoring and other princessly skills. Meanwhile Remington and the other young men (except for one, who enrolls with the princesses because he was raised as the designated girl in a family of 22 boys) are in the school's other wing training to be dragon-killing knights. Romance ensues, as do sharp conflicts when Evie, whose past is illuminated bit by bit in arbitrarily timed visions and revelations, turns out to have been lovingly raised, though not by humans. By the end, Evie has won her way past tests and rivalries, fought several witches (scary ones, too), and caught hints of both her human parentage and a promising destiny among such warrior greats as Cinderella and Snow White. Flashes of inspiration light up a protagonist with plenty of spine, a plot too dependent on set pieces and a colorful but quickly sketched supporting cast. A sequel-worthy debut nonetheless. (Fantasy. 11-13) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Forget the notion of traditional princesses. At Pennyroyal Academy, princesses are trained to fight witches and save kingdoms, and, yes, knights learn to slay dragons. Which brings us to Evie's dilemma: she is training to be a princess, yet she was raised by dragons and was brought to the academy by a dragon-slaying knight wannabe. Larson has crafted a dark Grimm-like fairy tale, with teens training to defeat evil, save villages, and find their own identities in the process. Familiar names like Cinderella and Snow White dot the landscape, while tongue-in-cheek characters like Rumpledshirtsleeves and the Fairy Drillsergeant are part of a no-nonsense faculty charged with readying the girls for combat. Yet the focus and detailed character development is on the young women, their hopes and dreams (sometimes dreadfully scary), their real fears, and their disappointments in themselves, their friends, and the adults around them. Since the book ends with some of the princesses and knights selected to return for another school year, Larson has left the door open for a welcome second year at Pennyroyal with Evie and her friends.--Bradburn, Frances Copyright 2014 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
OVER THE PAST decade or so, storybook princesses have gotten a worse rep than even the Koch brothers. I remember when, a few years ago, my own 3-year-old took her copy of "Polite as a Princess" to the playground and I begged her to stuff it in the cover of a New Republic. She would not. But now, two new books have arrived that just might make it safe to wave your princess flag again in public. In M.A. Larson's "Pennyroyal Academy," for middle-grade readers, a young girl in the throes of a "memory curse" finds herself in the forest, clad only in a frock made of spider webs. She makes her way to Pennyroyal Academy, a school for budding princesses and knights. These are not the kind of princesses who demonstrate their princessosity by feeling the sting of a pea beneath several mattresses. No, these girls are measured by their ability to fight the encroaching armies of (scary and creepy) witches that are threatening all the kingdoms. They are not trained to sit idly, batting their eyelashes, but to embody the "four core values" of Courage, Compassion, Kindness and Discipline. Comparison to the Harry Potter series seems inevitable: There's a school; a special student who appears to be orphaned; nasty, upper-crust kids; some magic; and the dark shadows of evil forces. But I am prepared to argue that "Pennyroyal Academy" is worthy of the matchup - it's ridiculously compelling, and I hope it's followed by several sequels. The debut novelist M.A. Larson hails from the world of "My Little Pony," where he is a writer on the TV show and a frequent presence at events for "Bronies" - boys, teenagers and grownups who are into "My Little Pony." In the way that Bronies co-opted a formerly girlie form and made it unisex, Larson plays here with princesses as rescuers, not rescuees. He's taken on the notion of a young girl unsure of her past who has to define herself, not by her heritage or legacy, but by her instincts; she gets to decide who she is. Evie (a name she acquires, as she can't remember her given name) is a complex character who deals with the twists thrown at her with wit, style and bravery. Larson, a gifted, evocative storyteller, infuses the plot with Brothers Grimm allusions. A "house mother," for example, tells Evie that after her own mother died when she was a child, her father married a "dreadful woman, and her dreadful daughters became my stepsisters." In this version of Cinderella, though, she tried to figure out what made them so hateful, and eventually one became her best friend. "Pennyroyal Academy" is one of those books you want to parse out and make last. It is a breathtakingly exciting novel, and Evie deserves a special place in a new pantheon of capable, feisty and, yes, admirable literary princesses. For younger readers, there's "The Princess in Black," in which the husband-and-wife team Shannon Hale and Dean Hale ("Rapunzel's Revenge" and "Calamity Jack") bring to life another unexpected royal character: Princess Magnolia. By day, she is a tiara donning, hot chocolate sipping, scone eating, pink dress wearer. But when an alarm sounds, she dons black tights and a cape and becomes the Princess in Black. Her job: to fight monsters who forget to stay in Monster Land and wish to eat her friend Duff's goats. Meanwhile a nosy duchess is trying to discover her secrets. Will she make it in time to stop the monsters? Of course! This charmingly told book has lovely old-fashioned illustrations and a great message: You can't judge a princess by the color of her gown. JULIE KLAM'S most recent book is "Friendkeeping: A Field Guide to the People You Love, Hate, and Can't Live Without."