Review of Ivy's Ever After by Dawn Lairamore

Lairamore, Dawn. Ivy's Ever After. Holiday House, 2010.

Here is the starred review I wrote for School Library Journal. Find the rest of the August reviews here.

*LAIRAMORE, Dawn. Ivy's Ever After. 311p. CIP. Holiday House. 2010. Tr $16.95. ISBN 978-0-8234-2261-6. LC 2009043288. Gr 4-6–Princess Ivory has grown up in the isolated kingdom of Ardendale as the only child of an absentminded king. Per the Dragon Treaty, she is locked in a tower when she turns 14, there to languish until the nefarious prince from a neighboring land kills her dragon guard and marries her. But as Ivy has no intention of marrying this prince, she escapes from the tower with the help of the dragon (a runty and peaceful creature named Elridge) and goes off with him to discover a way to foil the prince's plan to destroy Ardendale. They have many perilous adventures and meet some intriguing characters, including a romance-prone fairy godmother named Drusilla and an adorable but hideously grumpy miniature goat named Toadstool. Their fates being intertwined, Ivy and Elridge hit it off right away, and by the end of the story they are clearly best friends forever. This is a fun and entertaining fairy-tale-based fantasy with a nice balance of character development and action. Give it to fans of Donna Jo Napoli's The Prince of the Pond (Puffin, 1994) or Diane Zahler's The Thirteenth Princess (HarperCollins, 2010).–Eva Mitnick, Los Angeles Public Library