Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, Jessica Day George

Long ago and far away in the land of ice and snow, there came a time when it seemed that winter would never end. The months when summer should have given the land respite were cold and damp, and the winter montsh were snow filled and colder still. The people said the cold had lasted a hundred years, and feared that it would last a hundred more. It was not a natural winter, and no one knew what witch or troll had caused the winds to howl so fiercly.

Jessica Day George is a really good writer; her stories feel like fairy tales. This is another retelling of the Norwegian folktale East of the Sun, West of the Moon, and I liked it just as much as East, another retelling by Edith Pattou. If not more. The main character of the story is just called "the lass" or "the pika" (pika means girl.) She agrees to go to live with a white bear in his ice castle for one year to help her poor family. But she realizes that the bear is under an evil enchantment, and when she endangers him, she sets off on a quest to learn the truth. The writing was great in this book; it was absorbing all the way through. Even though I sort of knew what was going to happen already from other retellings, I still wanted to keep reading. There are great characters, and as Jessica Day George studied Scandavia, the setting felt very real.

Read Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow:

• if you like fantasy
• if you like retellings of old folktales
• if you liked East
• if you like Shannon Hale or Patricia C. Wrede

317 pages.

Very Good! I would recommend this book!