For Your Christmas Shopping List

I jumped at the opportunity to read Melanie Dickerson's soon to be published book The Piper's Pursuit and I was not disappointed. I enjoy this series as there are strong characters, a clear delineation between good and evil, and they are Christian but not preachy.

Several aspects of The Piper's Pursuit stand out. Often times, this genre tends to have strong female leads which I greatly enjoy, but sometimes the male characters are less than impressive. The Piper's Pursuit has equally strong male and female characters. This is important as it shows the wonderful things that happen when a relationship is seen as a partnership instead of just one person being the leader. The second aspect was that Dickerson did a marvelous job of depicting the hypocrisy of the town mayor who went out of his way to appear "Christian" but was actually anything but. This really helped to emphasize the idea that appearances can be deceiving.

Melanie Dickerson writes for the YA crowd, but her books are enjoyable for all readers who enjoy a good, clean story that includes a lesson. I recommend them for moms and their junior high-early high school age daughters to read together or as read alouds for middle school students.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received The Piper's Pursuit from Thomas Nelson via NetGalley. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Author Spotlight: Melanie Dickerson

Sometimes you find a new to you author and then proceed to read absolutely everything you can find by that author. That was my experience recently when I was introduced to Melanie Dickerson. Recently while at ALA, my daughter and I both picked up ARC (Advanced Reader Copies) of books by Dickerson. They look interesting enough that instead of mailing them home as we did the majority of the books we picked up, I stuck these into my carry-on luggage. I quickly read the first book I had picked up, The Princess Spy, and discovered it was part of a larger series titled The Fairy Tale Romance Series. I then recalled that I had nabbed several of these books on sale via my Kindle. So, I started at the beginning of the series and read through the entire series, and even purchased the one or two I didn't have already, straight to the yet to be published The Silent Songbird.

As the series title indicates, these novels are based on fairy tales. Each book is a re-telling of a specific fairy tale such as Cinderella or Snow White. Each fairy tale has been set in medieval Germany and are based around one particular kingdom. As such, while each story can and does stand alone, they are also part of a larger series where Dickerson entertwines the stories in a most enchanted way. As I was reading the stories, several fairy tales were easy to spot due to the names that were chosen for the main character or other clues. However, for other stories, it was quite difficult to discern which fairy tale was the basis for the story. In addition to the fairy tale as the basis of the story, Dickerson does an amazing job with the details of the setting and larger historical context. For example, being set in medieval Germany the characters are historically all members of the Catholic church. As such, she incorporates their faith easily into the overall story in a natural way. Some of the characters in each story are members of the aristocracy and have access to the Latin Bible which is then brought into the story as well.

Melanie Dickerson's primary audience for these works is young adult. However, I found the stories completely engaging although I am well past my young adult years. Being young adult novels, I was able to read through them quite quickly which helped in my binge read of the whole series in one weekend. This series as well as her newer series A Medieval Fairy Tale and The Regency Spies of London are highly recommended for school and public libraries as well as church libraries. They are perfect for junior high and high school readers who have out grown the Disney Princesses and are also familiar with the original Grimm fairy tales. They are also highly recommended for mother-daughter read-together opportunities.