Three Wishes

May 1, 2010
Grades 8-10 Seventeen-year-old Rose is shocked to discover that her French grandfather is very much alive and wants to meet her for the first time. She blogs about her trip from home in Australia and the various members of her grandfathers castlelike household, but she is disturbed by an unknown poster on her blog who seems to be threatening her. Meanwhile, grandfathers home seems fraught with dangers of its ownsome of the awkward romantic variety, others more deadly. Merlin does a superb job of building out both Rose and the cast of supporting characters, including her grandfather, two young men between whom Rose wants to choose, and even the walk-on parts of her deceased parents, a doctor at the French hospital, and her grandfathers cook. This novel plays with traditional fairy talesincluding, as might be expected from the main characters name, Rose Red and Rose Whitein a clever and engaging style, nicely adapted for the twenty-first-century reader. Accompanying Web sites offer the source material and the threatening agents own blog.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)