The Girl Who Bewitched the Red Shoes

What happens when magic is broken?

Something is wrong with 12-year-old Aurora's magic. After a Vanishing spell sent her all the way from Fairendale to the Whispering Woods outside Rosehaven, she tries to make the best of her situation-but her magic makes things dance. She's already lost countless potential shelters, delectable meals, and practical dresses (with pockets, of course) to the sky, after they danced away from her. How does a girl survive alone in the woods without magic?

When she meets the prince of Rosehaven, who's looking for Rapunzel's invisible tower, and learns that evil people in the land are capturing children and turning them over to someone for reward money, she vows to save the children. After all, she is one. Unfortunately, this means surrendering herself to the captors.

And what she finds at the end of her quest-children locked in cages, a society doubtful of good magic, and a powerful foreign sorceress from across the sea-will further complicate Aurora's magic problem. Can she channel her magic's wonky curse-making things dance-to save her and all the caged children before the sorceress accomplishes her evil, unknowable plan?

The Girl Who Bewitched the Red Shoes is the seventeenth book in the Fairendale series, an epic fantasy middle grade series that explores both familiar and unfamiliar fairy tales, legends, myths, and folk tales. The world of Fairendale revolves around villains and heroes-all on a quest for what they believe is right. Throughout the series, the story of King Willis and his determination to keep the throne of Fairendale (at all costs? Perhaps. Or perhaps not.) is woven into the story of his son, Prince Virgil, heir to the throne and friend to the village children, and the story of fairy tale children fleeing for their lives-children who become what we know as fairy tale villains (according to traditional stories), for one good reason or another.

One cannot always know, at first glance, who is the villain and who is the hero.