Title: The Forbidden Library
Author: Django Wexler
Publisher: Kathy Dawson Books (Penguin)
Release Date: April 15, 2014
Alice always thought fairy tales had happy endings. That--along with everything else--changed the day she met her first fairy.
When Alice's father goes down in a shipwreck, she is sent to live with her uncle Geryon--an uncle she's never heard of and knows nothing about. He lives in an enormous manor with a massive library that is off-limits to Alice. But then she meets a talking cat. And even for a rule-follower, when a talking cat sneaks you into a forbidden library and introduces you to an arrogant boy who dares you to open a book, it's hard to resist. Especially if you're a reader to begin with. Soon Alice finds herself INSIDE the book, and the only way out is to defeat the creature imprisoned within.
It seems her uncle is more than he says he is. But then so is Alice.
Django vs. Seth
Seth to Django: Speaking of Ender's Game, what would Alice do with to get past the giant in the fantasy game?
The Giant's Drink game would be very frustrating for Alice, as it was frustrating for Ender. She has a pretty logical mind, and figuring out that the game is rigged so that you always lose would be infuriating. She's not quite as angry as Ender got, though, so I doubt the solution of killing the giant would occur to her. She might try talking to it -- Alice's first instinct is always to talk to creatures, even scary-looking ones, and see if she can work out a solution that way.
I have always thought that, if Alice lived in a more modern time, she would be very into computers -- she has the right sort of attitude for them. So if she'd grown up in the Ender's Game universe, I like to think she might be an accomplished hacker. In that case, she's definitely the sort of person who would break into the code and change the rules so it was possible to win the game, like Captain Kirk at the Kobayashi Maru.
Interior Artwork Sample