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Frankie Stein and Draculaura are about to make some new friends!
you might see EWs exclusive reveal of the cover, above.
Credit: Mattel
Our goals with this book were to make it epic and make it hysterical.
I truly cant wait for readers to see it.
The land of fairytales and nursery rhymes, magical creatures and storybook characters.Andenchanted mirrors.
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
[1] Inside a particular enchanted mirror, where the Evil Queen is imprisoned.
This is the same Evil Queen who poisoned Snow White, but she didnt stop there.
Even so, shehasmanaged to escape before.
Jenn Florence
Maybe she will again, because right now the mirror prison walls are shaking.
Just for a second.
As if the prison was a cell phone buzzing with a call coming in.
Do they have cell phones in Ever After?
Let me check my Narrator Handbook…oh yeah, they haveMirrorPhones.
Not sure if those buzz.
Maybe a different simile?
The walls shook like…like a box of mildly irritated bees?
The point is, the Evil Queen can feel the shaking.
Ooh, she says with a smile.
And what is she thinking?
[2]
Aha.
It seems that shes been enormously, apocalyptically bored.
Her only entertainment is spying on the people of Ever After through their mirrors.
And non-evil people areso boring.
I have been secretly watching you!
For the Evil Queen, there was no point.
In her opinion, regular people never did anything entertaining on their own.
Usually she had to motivate them with things like pointy sticks, poison apples, or abruptly carnivorous plants.
But mirror prison dampens the Evil Queens magic.
So after all that boring watching, a tiny earthquake was hopeful news.
But what caused it?
the Evil Queen asks herself.
[3] Theres no earth here to shake, so it must be magical.
And since Im the most magical thing around, perhaps it was…me!
The Evil Queen likes to think that she herself is the cause of most interesting things.
Now… she taps her chin delicately, aware of how beautiful she isin a pale, gaudy way.
What was I doing when the tremor happened?
She had been thinking about those little meat-filled dumplings she used to buy from a village shop.
[4] She loves those.
Maybe dumpling thoughts had caused the tremor?
So she begins again to consider dumplings.
She thinks so hard about dumplings that she grits her teeth and screams Dumplings!Dumplings!
I am thinking about dumplings!
The lack of dumpling results means somethingbesidesher probably caused the tremor.
She puts her black-gloved hand on one of the glass walls of her cell and casts a seeking spell.
Repeal the concealed real.
Reveal the wheel that reeled our keel.
The mirror hums but stays dark.
The glass wall changes, blurring and fading, light and shadow moving across the pane.
She nods in approval.
The mirror isnt alive exactly, but everything can benefit from a loud reminder that she is fearsome.
The shadows and light coalesce into the silhouettes of two girls.
She should be able to clearly see anyone in Ever After.
[5]
Voices thrum from behind the glass, sound slipping through in pieces.
…Shadowplopplopplop…
Something hap…the map…
…Ever After High?
But those wordsShadow Highcontinue to echo.
The Evil Queens eyes narrow.
She prides herself on her ability to notice Powerful Things, and she recognizes power in that name.
Shadow High, the Evil Queen says, tracing her finger across the dark face of the mirror.
Beneath her finger, a tiny spiderweb line of a crack appears.
Its no more than an inch long, but itisa crack.
She can work with cracks.
Cracks are how spiders get in.
They are how foundations start to crumble.
Whatever thisShadow Highis, she smells in its name a power greater than anything shes ever after known.
[1] Oops sorry, Im not sayingIanymore, I promise.
[2] Oh great.
I guess I have to peak into that mind of hers and get my evil on.
[4] Well, mostly she stole them, TBH.
[5] Maybe thats because the silhouettes arent of girls in Ever After but somewhere far far away…
