Once Upon a Wickedness
Published on 29. August 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
208 pages
978-1-77695-809-2 (ISBN)
Description
An exciting adventure novel for contemporary kids with a fairytale setting, a daring hero and message that you're never too young and powerless to stand up to tyrants!
What happens when a group of school children, led by the resourceful ten-year-old Dance Violet, dare to ask those in power some hard questions? Find out in this magical novel by the bestselling Fleur Beale, stunningly illustrated by Lily Uivel.
Ten-year-old orphan Dance Violet might have had a short and troubled history, but it hasn't dampened her warrior spirit - not in the slightest. And that's a good thing, because something is rotten in her village, and no one else has the courage to try to put things right.
People have been disappearing overnight and the village children are left to fend for themselves under the tyrannical schoolteachers Murk and Misselthwaite. There are whispers that the trouble started ten years ago when a beautiful but wicked woman - 'the golden-haired hellion' - appeared at a wedding.
Dance has some powerful gifts that she's only just beginning to discover, and while she knows it's dangerous to ask questions, she's determined to find this golden-haired hellion - even if it means getting disappeared.
When Dance finds her, the golden-haired hellion had better look out.
Read all Fleur Beale's bestselling novels!
What happens when a group of school children, led by the resourceful ten-year-old Dance Violet, dare to ask those in power some hard questions? Find out in this magical novel by the bestselling Fleur Beale, stunningly illustrated by Lily Uivel.
Ten-year-old orphan Dance Violet might have had a short and troubled history, but it hasn't dampened her warrior spirit - not in the slightest. And that's a good thing, because something is rotten in her village, and no one else has the courage to try to put things right.
People have been disappearing overnight and the village children are left to fend for themselves under the tyrannical schoolteachers Murk and Misselthwaite. There are whispers that the trouble started ten years ago when a beautiful but wicked woman - 'the golden-haired hellion' - appeared at a wedding.
Dance has some powerful gifts that she's only just beginning to discover, and while she knows it's dangerous to ask questions, she's determined to find this golden-haired hellion - even if it means getting disappeared.
When Dance finds her, the golden-haired hellion had better look out.
Read all Fleur Beale's bestselling novels!
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Auckland
New Zealand
Publishing group
Penguin Group (NZ)
Target group
Children/juvenile
Interest Age: From 7 to 12 years
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 214 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
177 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-77695-809-2 (9781776958092)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Fleur Beale is the author of many award-winning books for children and young adults - more than 40 books published in New Zealand, the United States and England. She is the only writer to have twice won the Storylines Gaelyn Gordon Award for a Much-Loved Book- with Slide the Corner in 2007 and I Am Not Esther in 2009. She won the Esther Glen Award for distinguished contribution to children's literature for Juno of Taris in the 2009 LIANZA Children's Book Awards. Fierce September won the YA category in the 2011 NZ Post Children's Book Awards and the LIANZA Young Adult Award in 2011. In 2012 she won the Margaret Mahy Medal for her outstanding contribution to children's writing and in 2015 she was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit. A former high-school teacher, she lives in Wellington.