Prolific British author French (Once Upon a Time, 1996) serves up a charmingly witty adventure peopled with all manner of fairy-tale archetypes: a bad prince who is really not the least bit evil, a beautiful but nasty stepsister, a beleaguered but brave little girl named Gracie, and a talking bat. Lady Lamorna, an aging, evil sorceress, sets off to buy herself a grotesque gown, while at the same time Marlon the bat rescues Gracie from her cellar prison and leads her into the wilderness and the eventual safety of a group of old crones. Meanwhile, Prince Marcus has been left at home for bad behavior and is thus happily passed over by Lady Lamorna's wicked and calculating spell that turns his twin and the other princes and princesses into frogs. French is a deft storyteller who keeps all the plotlines crisscrossing as beautifully as the web the crones must keep straight and true. Devotees of fractured fairy tales will be as pleased as Gracie with the results.

Vanessa would like to concentrate on spelling bees, her crush, and seventh grade. However, with her oft-absent governor mother running for president, there are distractions--particularly the threatening notes in her locker. Vanessa's subsequent worries are realistic, but her total ignorance about involvement in a national campaign is not.

Conceiving a burning desire for a new gown—black velvet, decorated with poison ivy, spider webs and skulls—wicked Lady Lamorna decides to pay for it by turning all the local princes into frogs and extracting ransoms from their royal parents. She gets help on the way from the considerably more clever Foyce Undershaft, a young lady of stunning beauty and "a heart as hard as a frying pan," who is also the evil stepsister of kindly Gracie Gillypot. Enter Marlon, a bat who addresses young folk as "kiddo" and is forever flitting off with a " Ciao !" to deliver messages or orchestrate some dodgy deal. Thanks to his efforts Gracie hooks up with Marcus, a scruffy prince missed in the general amphibious transformation, to rescue the other princes and to trick Foyce into entering a magical sort of rehabilitation program. Lady Lamorna even gets her gown, in the end. Larded with stock comical characters and illustrated with Collins's gangly, Beardsley-esque line drawings, the story will slip down like the bonbon it is. (Fantasy. 10-12)

Take a bedraggled, evil sorceress with a dire need for gold and a dimwitted troll for a sidekick, an impish prince with a goody-two-shoes twin brother, a noble-hearted yet naïve young maiden and her conniving stepsister with a chip on her perfectly slim shoulder, throw them into a screwball fairytale, and the result approximates French's (the Tiara Club series) latest. Intersecting plotlines map each of the four major characters' individual journeys over the brambly hill and through the enchanted woods until their fortunes collide for better or for worse at—what else?—a ball. What follows is as wacky as it is entertaining: as princes galore are zapped into frogs, quirky elements like mazes that change direction and talking bats move the story along. As any fairytale fan knows, there's always a happy ending to look forward to, and this one doesn't disappoint. The elaborate b&w sketches, on the safe side of macabre, add to the fun. Ages 7–9. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(July)