Castle Hangnail

Author: Ursula Vernon
Illustrator: Ursula Vernon

© Date: 2015
Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers
Pages: 373
Chapters: Yes
Illustrations: Yes, but most page layouts do not have an illustration
Publisher Recommended Age: 8-12 years
Bonus Activities at End of Book: No

Summary from Book: When Molly shows up at Castle Hangnail’s doorstep to fill the vacancy for a Wicked Witch, the castle’s minions are suspicious. After all, she is twelve years old, barely five feet tall, and quite…polite. It’s not exactly what they had in mind for wicked. But the castle desperately needs a Master or else the Board of Magic will decommission it, leaving the minions without the home they love.

Molly may not be as spectacularly cruel and devilishly demanding as the castle’s previous Masters, but when she produces some rather impressive magic, the minions feel hopeful she’ll be approved by the Board of Magic. They even start to like her. It turns out, though, that Molly is hiding quite a few secrets, including one that could mean the end of Castle Hangnail.

Page Pig Thoughts: When I opened this book with the dark looking cover, I was not expecting a sweet story about kindness, bravery, and personal responsibility. I totally appreciated the surprise and enjoyed following Molly as she joined the family of Castle Hangnail residents. Ursula Vernon created a world that dips into the darker/creepy side of things, but is still bright and full of humor. A wicked witch that does wicked things but still manages to be kind and respectful is a wonderful character to pull off. Following Molly the wicked witch’s path of growth is a fun ride.

Wicked and Evil are very different things in this story. “Wicked is turning someone into an earwig so they can think about their life choices, but evil is turning someone into an earwig and stepping on them.” I appreciate the distinction and seeing that someone wicked can still do good in their home and community. While old traditions of Castle Hangnail involved mean masters, seeing the minions open their hearts to a new kind of living that involves wickedness and love/caring is sweet.

Use caution with younger or sensitive readers, despite the sweet parts of the story, some of the content may be scary.

Family Unit: Molly (age 12) had been living at home with her twin sister, mother, and father. At Castle Hangnail, Molly lives with Majordomo, Edward, Cook, Angus, Pins, Goldfish, Serenissima, and Bugbane.

Conflict/Social Issues:

Castle Hangnail has not had a master in a very long time and desperately needs a new one, but the minions in residence struggle with the master that turns up on their doorstep. If the castle does not get a proper master, the magic will be taken out of the castle, the minions will need to move/find new work, and the castle grounds will be sold.
Majordomo, the castle guardian, struggles with the expectation of the castle Master being rather evil and treating him poorly, but kind of liking that Molly treats him nicely. He is not confident that Molly will be able to complete the tasks to be approved as castle master.
Molly is pretending that she got the invitation to be master of the castle and that she has better training than she really does. She assures everyone that she is really wicked.

Positive Items:

Molly treats all creatures/beings with respect, which allows her to develop the sort of relationships that she needs to have success as Master of Castle Hangnail.
Molly has a knack for using her wicked magical abilities to still do good things. Smiting just anyone is not nice.
Molly keeps in mind that wicked witches take responsibility for their actions, so she is willing to apologize and fix things when needed.
Molly realizes that just because someone says that they are your friend does not mean that their actions indicate they are actually being a good friend.

Items of Interest:

Molly’s twin sister is the good twin and loves all things pink and cheery, so Molly feels that being the evil twin is just the way things are. Molly’s twin does not approve of Molly’s preferences for black and old bones…and chewing gum.
Molly tells her family that she is going to summer camp when she leaves to become master of Castle Hangnail.
Molly takes an invitation that was sent for her older friend, Eudamonia, to fill the role of Castle Hangnail Master. She does not tell anyone at the castle that she is not actually Eudamonia or that she may have to go back home at the end of summer.
The castle guardian did not have a name, Molly names him Majordomo. He is a stitched together, Frankenstein-esque hunchback.
Edward is an enchanted suit of armor. His joints are rather rusty, but he manages to make his way around.
Cook is a female minotaur. Her son, Angus, also lives at the castle. Cook has had two or three husbands.
Pins is a burlap doll with pins and needles sticking out of him, but is not a voodoo doll. He careful tends to Goldfish, they love each other. Pins is an amazing seamstress/sewing person/tailor, can’t think of the right word.
Serenissima is a steam spirit. She is made of steam and easily steam cleans everything as a maid.
Molly needs to prove that she has magic before she is allowed to stay and take on the castle master tasks. Molly casts a spell to talk with bats. The bats help out Molly with an impressive display. Molly then finds that a bat has been left for her to care for. Bugbane gets really tired at night, so he doesn’t really fit in with the other bats. He hangs on Molly and they become good friends.
The Ministry of Magic has a list of tasks for a new master to complete before being approved as a castle master. Molly was not sure how she would be able to complete the items on the list, but slowly works on them one by one.
Majordomo, the castle guardian, finds out that Molly is supposed to go home at the end of summer. He does not tell the other castle residents/minions because he knows how upset they will be.
A farmer in town was being mean/abusive to his donkey and was mean in general. Molly turns the donkey into a dragon to scare the man into being nice to the donkey. The man gets terrified and moves away from town to live with his daughter. Some of the village residents are grateful to Molly for getting rid of the mean farmer.
Molly befriends a local village gardener. Molly asks for help from Miss Handlebram cleaning up an herb garden at the castle (Molly needs herbs and such for her witchy spells). The two become good friends as they battle weeds together.
A local real estate guy has some shady business practices. Molly and Angus stop him from throwing a rock through an old woman’s window. After he makes a ridiculously low offer to buy Castle Hangnail, Molly catches him trying to light her barn on fire. The police are thankful that Molly caught him in the act because he had been sneaking around town doing nefarious things for awhile.
Castle Hangnail’s plumbing finally went kaput, the castle was ice cold and the indoor plumbing no longer worked. The castle’s residents did not have enough money to get the plumbing repaired. Molly knows that as Master, she needs to figure it out. She winds up befriending the moles of the castle grounds. She helps them with Wormrise and they dig up all the of stuff around the castle grounds.
Molly winds up sharing her magic with a magical mole, which conjures up a 40ft earthworm. The moles are able to pay the earthworms respect, which is what earthworms really want. The moles are then able to continue keeping the numbers of earthworms down.
Molly sifts through the stuff from the moles to determine if it is worth anything. She takes it to the local antiques dealer with Marjordomo (at least, I think it was him). They are disappointed to learn that most of it isn’t worth much. The dealer takes the best prospects to a weekend sale to see if he can find any buyers. Most of it didn’t earn anything, but it turned out that they had a rare container from a snake oil salesman and are able to get the plumbing fixed. The plumber and his apprentices creatively work to find a solution that is cost efficient for Molly and Castle Hangnail because they all appreciate the things that Molly has been doing around town.
Yes, you can see more of the plumber than you would really want to see.
The real Eudaimonia comes to fill the position of castle master. All of the minions learn that Molly lied about who she was, but only Majordomo holds out as believing that Eudaimonia should stay as the Master, not Molly.
Eudaimonia is an evil sorceress and treats all of the minions super poorly, but that is the old tradition of castle masters. She makes many demands of the minions and believes most of the minions are lower than people. She decides that she will sell off Angus to make some money to do some of her redecorating.
Eudaimonia makes the minions upset, she treats them poorly and they believe that Molly is already Master of Castle Hangnail, so they are mad at Majordomo for not telling Eudaimonia that.
Majordomo went down to the boiler room to have a good cry because he realizes that the other minions are mad at him and keeping secrets from him, but more importantly, Eudaimonia is a terrible master. He is upset that she plans to sell the Clockwork Bees and Angus to make money to redecorate the castle. Selling minions is not guild approved, but more importantly, Angus is not livestock.
Molly comes to comfort Majordomo because she has been hiding out in the boiler room. She didn’t want to leave the minions alone with Eudaimonia. Molly and Majordomo have an honest conversation that makes them both feel better about their previous decisions (using Eudaimonia’s invitation and accepting Eudaimonia as a master). When they emerge from the boiler room to talk with the other minions, all of them are a united front with trust and forgiveness. Which helps them work together to rid the castle of Eudaimonia.
As it turns out, Eudaimonia had originally said Castle Hangnail was too shabby and not worthy of her time, so Molly had taken the invitation to be master for herself. Molly used to hand out in Eudaimonia’s room practicing magic, but it turns out that Eudaimonia had been stealing Molly’s magic to improve her own powers. Which is the sort of thing that an evil sorceress would do.
Eudaimonia froze Miss Handlebram into a giant block of ice. When Molly emerges with an apology to the minions, they work together to free Miss Handlebram from the magical ice block.
Eudaimonia kidnaps Pins. Goldfish helps launch the mission to rescue Pins. Goldfish overcomes her own fears to be brave for her friend.
Molly keeps her focus on saving the minions, who are her friends, before she concerns herself with protecting herself from Eudaimonia.
Molly and Eudaimonia fight for the right to be castle master. Molly’s minion friends and Miss Handlebram gave her some ideas that helped launch her attack, but the fight is ultimately won based on Molly’s skills and ability to think things through. Molly is able to sever the cord that allows Eudaimonia to steal Molly’s magic, which gave Molly back her own magic and power to make Eudaimonia leave.
While with Eudaimonia, Molly had learned how to separate her shadow from her body and make it dance. She thought the spell was simple and silly, but she came to suspect that there was something more to it than she realized. In the end, the shadow spell was what sends Eudaimonia away. Molly’s shadow was taking Eudaimonia away to the shadow world, which naturally terrified Eudaimonia. Molly stops the shadow and is tempted by the power that she could gain for herself by going to the shadow world. A quick thinking move from Edward distracts her and brings her attention back to the minions that she loves. Molly realizes that she doesn’t need that sort of power and is bad enough as she is.
The minions fight Eudaimonia’s bodyguards because part of their job as minions, and members of the Minion’s Guild, is to fight for Molly. While they are rather successful in their attempts, Molly is the one that needs to keep everything together.
After Eudaimonia is gone and Castle Hangnail throws a dinner party, Miss Handlebram and the minions put together a final act in hopes that Molly will be allowed to stay at Castle Hangnail full time. They create a ruse that Castle Hangnail is actually Camp Hangnail and welcome in Molly’s family. Miss Handlebram pretends to be a camp director and says that Molly is super bright and they would give her a full ride tuition to their exclusive boarding school. While Molly leaves in the car with her family, she is hopeful that her parents will let her return to Castle Hangnail for the fall semester. And yes, Bugbane is hidden away in her hair when she is in the car.