Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Elizabeth Rew's Social Studies teacher has just helped her land the perfect parttime high-school job—as a page at the New-York Circulating Material Repository, a quirky cross between a library and a museum, specializing in realia of all sorts and catering to both the business needs and personal whims of researchers, artists, [End Page 43] and curiosity seekers. Perks include a generally friendly and supportive staff; the proximity of Marc Merritt, a school basketball star well above Elizabeth's social set; and some deliciously creepy rumors of a huge bird that haunts the stacks. Best of all is the bonus promised to all pages who work their way up—access to and borrowing privileges from the Grimm Collection, a locked room filled with magical items pertaining to fairy tales collected by the folklorists themselves. Elizabeth and her fellow pages earn their way in and do a bit of forbidden but harmless larking about, borrowing the seven-league boots and a mermaid's hair-enhancing comb. The threatening bird, however, turns out to be quite real, and there are dastardly persons who have been pilfering charmed items for their own permanent collections; it's up to Elizabeth and her new friends to solve the crime and keep the world safe from abused magic. Conversations can be pretty leaden, and character development nearly nonexistent, but the premise of a repository for fairy-tale material culture is bewitching enough to carry an otherwise tepid mystery. Readers who enjoy the tales of Gail Carson Levine (but are still a long way from reveling in Bill Willingham's Fables) can muse on the malignant and benign possibilities of DIY magic.