What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that this is not by any reasonable standard a book for children of any age. A teen is repeatedly raped by her father, then gang-raped by other teens who are then sodomized. Horrible miscarriages are graphically described. See the advisories for more horrifying details.

Families can talk about why the publishers might have decided to publish this as a young adult book instead of an adult book. Do they hope to make more money? Do they think that any book with children should be sold to children? Why would it have been chosen for so many best-of-year lists? Does its literary quality balance its content? For what ages would you recommend it?

After being repeatedly raped by her father and gang-raped by local teens, Liga escapes, with her baby daughter and another on the way, to a magical world where she is safe and everything is perfect. But soon others from the real world find their way into hers, and then her younger daughter finds her way back to the real world, eventually forcing Liga and her older daughter to come back and learn to deal with reality.

Note to the publishers and makers of best-children's-books-of-the-year lists: What were you thinking?! In what possible way could you have considered this a children's or young adult book? It opens with a sex act, and then in the first hundred pages the main character, a young girl, is repeatedly raped by her father, repeatedly gets pregnant, and then is repeatedly given drugs to cause horrible miscarriages, graphically described. After her loathsome father finally has his head bashed in by a horse, and a scene in which she examines his penis and wonders how it could have caused so much trouble, she gives birth alone. Then she is gang raped by five local teens, gets pregnant again, and contemplates killing her baby. Near the end of the book those five boys, now grown, are sodomized into unconsciousness. In between we get bestiality and some gruesome violence.

As if all of that wasn't bad enough, this is a fantasy book. Fantasy is a genre much beloved by bright children because it gives them the high-level language and complex plotting they crave, without all the adult content they're not ready for. With its lovely cover picture of a girl and a bear, and flap description of magical worlds, young teens and even tweens may be lured into reading it. And with it appearing on many best-of-year lists, no doubt many school and public libraries will buy it and put it in their children's section. This is a well-written adult book, and that's how it should have been marketed. The decision to sell it as a young adult book was a bad one.

From the Book:
But it was too late for the cold, clean air to save her; her insides had already come loose. She could not run or she would shake them out. Already they were drooling down her legs. She must clamp her thighs together to hold them in, and yet walk, and yet hurry, to the part of the forest edge they used for their excrements.

She did not achieve it. She fell to her knees in the snow. Inside her skirt, so much of her boiling self fell away that she felt quite undone below the waist, quite shapeless. No, look: sturdy hips. Look: a leg on either side. A blue-gray foot there, the other there. Gingerly, Liga sat back in a crouch to lift her numbing knees off the snow. The black trees towered in front of her, and the snow dazzled all around. She heaved and brought up nothing but spittle, but more of her was pushed out below by the heaving.

Other Books by Margo Lanagan:
Black Juice
Red Spikes

Going to Other Worlds:
Peter Pan
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Alice in Wonderland
So You Want to Be a Wizard
The Forgotten Door
A Wrinkle in Time
Fog Magic
Summerland
Coraline
Abarat
The Merchant of Death: The Pendragon Series, Book 1



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