Instead of Three Wishes

May 4, 1998
A gay teenager contemplates coming out and finds himself attracted to a French girl. "With its addictive combination of absorbing themes and glamorous setting, Kerr's newest stands up to the best of her oeuvre," said PW in a starred review. Ages 12-up.

July 31, 1995
Princes in disguise, royal elves and book-loving ghosts all play a part in the seven stories of this intermittently promising collection. Throughout, debut author Turner's style is expansive, allowing for mood-setting details and for occasionally sharp wit, but most of her plots follow familiar, predictable patterns. As a rural town fills up with leprechaun-hunters in "A Plague of Leprechaun," for example, it's easily foreseen that the sole disinterested party, an art school graduate intent on pursuing his craft, will end up with the little green fellow's bag of gold. On the other hand, the entry "Aunt Charlotte and the NGA Portraits" is a standout. This carefully framed narrative unfolds slowly and suspensefully to reveal a series of puzzles, their settings ranging from an underpopulated island off North Carolina to Canaletto's Venice, their marvelous resolution followed by a denouement of near-equal magic. The inventiveness and control shown here augur well for Turner's future endeavors. Ages 12-up.

September 1, 1995
Gr 5-8-Seven short stories in which fantasy mingles with the everyday lives of ordinary people. In the first, a leprechaun sighting brings an excess of tourists to a small New England village. In the next, a boy goes back in time and makes himself a hero by claiming to be a killer of roaches. In "Aunt Charlotte and the NGA Portraits," a girl is sent into a painting to search for a missing object that turns out to be a selkie skin. In the title story, an elf owes three wishes to a girl who keeps rejecting his efforts. In "The Baker King," a kingdom keeps waiting for its prince to return and finds that he is there all the time-but in a most unlikely place. Each selection has an unexpected twist at the end that will surprise readers but that logically fits the tale. Turner does a fine job of creating time and place and imbues the selections with a mild humor that will elicit gentle chuckles and smiles. Some of the stories are stronger than others, and not all of them will appeal to the same audience, but all are readable and the best are very good. Several would also make excellent choices for reading aloud.-Jane Gardner Connor, South Carolina State Library, Columbia

October 1, 1995
Gr. 4^-6. In this collection of seven short stories, magic crops up in unexpected places. A leprechaun roams the hills of New Hampshire; calling himself Leroy Roachbane, a black boy travels back in time to his spiritual home in prehistoric Sweden, where he rids the village lodge of roaches; a young factory worker finds his vision of heaven while working the high crane and chooses to become a ghost in the rafters; an elf prince has an unexpectedly hard time granting wishes to a young woman in Ontario. Each story varies in tone and setting from the one before it, and each illuminates our world with some light from past history or tradition. The real magic here is Turner's ability to convince readers that the realms of fairy tales can intersect with contemporary life. The result is no humorless blend of traditional elements with modern culture, but an often witty recognition of eternal truths spiced with temporal incongruities. A refreshing first book, this introduces Turner as an entertaining, original storyteller with something to say. ((Reviewed Oct. 1, 1995))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1995, American Library Association.)