Hearts, Keys, and Puppetry

Sam is brushing her hair, staring at her image in the mirror, but the person she sees staring back is not quite herself. Suddenly, she's traded places with the people who are truly behind the looking glass. There's a haunting immediacy to this piece of "Twitter" fiction. Yes, Neil Gaiman wrote the first sentence of this captivating tale on his phone. Creating a gang of distinct, sometimes-eerie voices and drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll, Katherine Kellgren handles the clipped, rhythmic sentences and dialogue expertly. She even adds an original melody to a snippet of verse. Gaiman and company sift through the lost brothers, badgers, evil queens, and animated puppets of folk stories and fairy tales to discover the new and revealing, and Kellgren gives voice to what will surely become the first classic of the Twitterverse. B.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine