Each month where I work, the librarians write a maximum 150 word review of a new book that came into the library during the month. I’ll be adding my contribution to the blog in a new feature I’m calling To the Point Tuesdays. If you want to play along, just post a link in the comments and I’ll add them to the post.

Title: The Seven Tales of Trinket
Author: Shelley Moore Thomas
Illustrator: Dan Craig
ISBN: 9780374367459
Pages: 369 pages
Publisher/Date: Farrar Straus Giroux, c2012.

“What are you going to do with it?” Thomas asked.
“What do you think?” My fingers trailed yet another direction, over the mountains to the forest.
He looked at me with eyes that widened as he understood my purpose.
“You are not going to follow it!” He spit when he yelled, which made it a good thing that Thomas the Pig Boy yelled very little.
“I am.”
“You are only eleven.”
“Almost twelve. A year older than you.”
“What will you do out there?” Thomas asked, flicking the map with his hand.
“Why, find my father, of course.”
And I will leave this place, and all the pain, behind.
But I did not say this aloud.
Thomas thought for a moment.
“If you go, can I come?” (13-14)

After the death of her mother, strong-willed Trinket heads out to find her father, a wandering bard who never made it back home after his last trip. Accompanied by Thomas, the Pig Boy, and an old map, they are called upon to save a Gypsy seer, rescue a baby stolen by selkies, banish a banshee, trick a fairy and escape a deadly highwayman. Realizing that she could follow her father’s footsteps in more ways than one, she starts practicing to become a bard. The story she really wants to find an ending for though is her own, but no one seems to know where her father went. A story about bards and telling stories based on Celtic folklore begs to be read-aloud. Trinket does not walk an easy road and must make some hard decisions about the true meaning of friendship. Fans of the movie Brave will not be disappointed.

Picture book and early reader author Shelley Moore Thomas shows her experience and talent as a professional storyteller in her first middle-grade novel.