In the bravura picture book Into the Goblin Market, a mischief-rich, briskly rhyming fairy tale from Vikki VanSickle (The Lightning Circle) and Jensine Eckwall (Dust & Grim), a farm girl contends with enchanted adversaries as well as something almost as fearsome: her sister's terrible judgment.
"I'm tired of cows and household chores!/ Don't you ever wish for more?" Mina asks her sister, Millie, both of whom appear to be in their tweens. Mina threatens to go to the market square, where some goblins will be in town for a week selling their magical merchandise. Millie tries to deter her: "'The Goblin Market isn't safe./ It is a tricky, wicked place.// Though many visit, few return.'/ But for adventure Mina yearned...." When Millie wakes in the night to find Mina gone, she sets out for the market to save her sister.
With its righteous turning of tables courtesy of Millie's quick thinking, Into the Goblin Market, which was inspired by the like-themed Christina Rossetti poem, earns a spot in the contemporary fairy-tale pantheon. The story seems to take place in modern times--with her big round glasses, blunt bob, and trousers, Millie can easily be pictured walking middle school corridors--but Eckwall's black-and-white art, which has the look of elaborate woodcuts, hosts a cauldron's worth of classic fairy-tale allusions. Readers can spot a piper, a witch with a (presumably) poisoned apple, and, in one of the book's occasional blasts of color, rescue-mode Millie in a red hood, conjuring another red-cloaked hero of the fairy-tale world. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author