By Liesl Shurtliff
The fairy-tale villain gets his own side of the story: a boy with half a name, a dangerous gift for spinning gold, and a destiny he has to outsmart.
In a village where your name is your destiny, our hero's mother died before she could finish saying his, so everyone calls him Rump. When he discovers he can spin straw into gold, it seems like the answer to everything, until he learns that his magic comes with a rule he can't break: he must trade the gold for whatever the other person offers, no matter how much it costs him. To take back control of his own fate, Rump sets off to find the rest of his name, dodging greedy millers, grumpy trolls, and a destiny that everyone thinks they already know.
This is the perfect book for a reader who's ready to argue that the bad guy might have had a point. It takes a story your child already half-knows and flips it, so they get the fun of recognition plus the surprise of a whole new angle. It's funny, moves at a good clip, and the magic has clever rules that make the plot feel like a puzzle. A slightly stronger reader who loves fantasy and fairy tales will tear through it and reach happily for the companion books.