"The School for Good and Evil" by Soman Chainani

The School for Good and Evil (May 14, 2013) by Soman Chainani.

The School for Good is all light and pristine and clean while the School for Evil is all dark and decrepit and dirty, so why would anyone ever want to be Evil? In this book, you don’t get a choice. 120 students per year are chosen by the School Master based on the Pure Good or Pure Evil that resides within them. All of them are descendants of fairytale characters – familiar and non – except for two. There are two Readers, and both hail from Gavaldon of the Woods Beyond. The School Master comes every four years, and every four years the people of Gavaldon worry about their children being kidnapped. But Sophie is not worried. Blond-haired, doe-eyed and pretty-in-pink, Sophie wants to be taken and dropped off at the School for Good so she can meet her prince. Her sort-of friend, Agatha, doesn’t believe in fairytales. Still, she doesn’t want Sophie to be taken. When she is, she tries to protect her, but is swept away with her …

            … And lands in the School for Good. Sophie is dropped unceremoniously into the School for Evil. Sophie is convinced that she is in the wrong school, and even Agatha feels out-of-sorts with Good. She’s like an ugly duckling in a roomful of swans, while Sophie is the swan with the ugly ducklings. Sophie is convinced that her fairytale lies with the School for Good, so what is Agatha doing in her school wearing her pink clothes and eating her dainty food? Agatha just wants to return home, but the only way that might happen is to live through a fairytale. The tricky thing, though, is that the villain always dies in the tale. But who’s the real villain?

            There are books I read swiftly because I read them posthaste, and there are those that I read swiftly because I want to. This middle-grade story falls into the latter category. I loved this book. I would recommend this to anyone with a love of fantasy and fantastical stories, especially if you like those that draw from fairytales. I recommend this especially for those who have middle-schoolers or those who teach middle-schoolers. The book is geared for ages 8-12, but I’d recommend 4^th graders on up, perhaps younger if the students are advanced readers.

            “The School for Good and Evil” is wonderfully imaginative, though Sophie drives me crazy sometimes. She’s a very selfish girl who does “good” for all the wrong, selfish reasons, yet she believes that she is truly a good person, both beautiful on the inside and out. Agatha is much more down-to-earth, perhaps because she’s always viewed herself as plain and ugly, but that is part of her character’s appeal. She is more relatable.

            Chainani’s story is not a Disney fairytale, though I suppose it is a fairytale of some sort. There is darkness in it, and one part of the story made me so mad, but I won’t go into it, lest I give something away. The action is intense, the characters are well-developed, and the plot is both fairytale-familiar and completely-other at the same time. This fantasy tale is sophisticated and is quite the debut from this author. I need to get my hands on the second book asap! I don’t normally grade books, but I give this one an A!