The Unfairest of Them All: Cute and clever

The Unfairest of Them All by Shannon Hale

The Unfairest of Them All is the second book in Shannon Hale’s EVER AFTER HIGH series for children. These are tie-in novels for Matel’s line of EVER AFTER HIGH dolls, clothing, diaries, and sundry accessories. I feel like a real chump for obliviously falling into Matel’s greedy little trap, but I love Shannon Hale’s children’s books, so…. so THERE.

The first book in the series (The Storybook of Legends) was sweet and charming, so I went in to this one knowing exactly what I was doing and I found it just as original and adorable as the first one. In The Unfairest of Them All, Raven Queen, daughter of the evil queen, refuses to sign The Storybook of Legends, a contract that would require her to carry on in her mother’s evil role. Raven doesn’t want to be evil, but by choosing not to be evil she ruins everyone else’s “happily ever after.” Now some of her friends think she really is evil because she wants to choose her own destiny and ruin theirs. She’s in quite a quandry. How can she rebel without hurting others?

The Unfairest of Them All is Apple White’s story. Apple is Snow White’s daughter and the person who Raven Queen is supposed to give the poisoned apple to. But Apple and Raven are also best friends. While Apple admires and respects Raven’s decision to not poison her, Apple risks losing her “happily ever after” with Prince Charming if she isn’t poisoned. There are plenty of other classmates at Ever After High who are in a similar situation. (It’s probably occurred to you that there should be two high schools in fairyland — one for the heroes and one for the villains. Then these destiny-killing kind of mix-ups couldn’t happen.)

All the cute quirky characters are here again, including Humpty Dumpty the rapping hacker and Madeline Hatter who keeps trying to learn secret information from the narrator. It’s all so cute (gosh, I keep using that word) and silly. Some of the silliness starts to grate (such as using words like “Hexcellent”, “hextreme sports” and “hext message”) but much of it is delightfully clever.

There’s actually quite a bit of contemplativeness, too. Using the fairytale context, the story thoughtfully explores real-world issues such as prejudice (especially about interracial marriage), dysfunctional families, benevolent leadership and crisis management, and the consequences of following or not following social norms. As silly as this book is, there is plenty of opportunity for serious discussion of these social issues, too.

Once again I listened to the audio version read by Kathleen McInerney and produced by Hachette Audio. McInerney gives a wonderful lively performance. I recommend this version.