Author: Lindsey Kelk
Illustrator: Pippa Curnick
© Date: 2019 – Great Britain (First US Edition 2021)
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 204
Chapters: Yes
Illustrations: Yes, many page layouts have illustrations
Publisher Recommended Age: 7-10 years
Bonus Activities at End of Book: No, but a sneak peek of the next book
Summary from Book: Cinders isn’t supposed to know how to do magic.
Her dog, Sparks, isn’t supposed to talk.
And they’re definitely not supposed to go to the fancy palace ball…
But with a fairy godmother named Brian, do we really think that’s going to stop them?
Page Pig Thoughts: Cinders grew on me a bit, but this one took a long time to get going. I had given up hope of this book turning into much because it took so long to really get going, but then the end helped me understand why it was so slow. This story doesn’t end at the end of the book, Cinders goes into the forest and the book ends. No closure, just moving on, which didn’t make the ending overly satisfying.
Cinders is loosely the Cinderella story. I appreciated the random mentions of other various fairy tale characters, like Georgie not fitting into his suit of armor due to eating too many pies. While Cinders and Sparks grew on me, this was a low star rating, I am not rushing out to find out what happens to the story.
Family Unit: Cinders lives at home with her father, stepmother, and two stepsisters
Conflict/Social Issues:
- Cinders has to do chores all the time.
- Cinders does not feel like being a proper lady, she is content in comfortable in stained, comfy clothes. But her stepmother says that she needs to be proper.
- Cinders discovers that she inadvertently can grant wishes. The magic is a bit wonky and doesn’t go according to her plans.
- Cinders really wants to go to the palace to the ball.
- Prince Joderick and his family believe fairies are terrible.
Positive Items:
- Cinders manages to forge her own path. She stays true to her care-free self and does her best to navigate her new magical skills.
- Cinders does try to defend witches and fairies to the king. She asks if he has ever seen a fairy and says, “no, I don’t think that is right” to the witch comments.
- Prince Joderick trusts Cinders enough to help her escape the dungeon, but is still able to cover his tracks with his parents.
Items of Interest:
- Cinders’s father is the royal construction person. He builds a roof over the palace ballroom. He is not home all the time.
- Cinders’s father is too sad to talk about Cinders’s mother. Cinders really wants to know about her mother. Brian, the fairy godmother, mentions Cinders’s mother but only has time to mention that she is a fairy, which makes Cinders a halfling.
- Cinders’s father is not inclined to help Cinders go to the palace, and is either oblivious to or doesn’t mind all the chores that Cinders needs to do all the time.
- Elves created phones.
- Sparks is obsessed with sausages.
- The stepsisters are content reading gossip magazines, doing makeup and hair, and sitting properly.
- The royal family believes fairies are horrible. They have sharp teeth and eat humans. Cinders isn’t so sure about that.
- Prince Joderick needs to marry a human before midsummer’s eve or he will need to marry a fairy.
- Cinders grants her own wishes to get to the palace ball.
- Cinders says the royal ball is boring, no one looks like they are having fun in their powdered wigs and ruffled/tight clothes.
- Cinders meets Prince Joderick while he is hiding under a table.
- Prince Joderick chooses Cinders to marry because she is content having her own adventures and doesn’t feel like wearing a ruffly dress.
- The queen mostly echoes what the king says.
- Cinders accidentally grants a wish that leads to the roast pig for dinner coming alive and biting the king in the butt.
- Cinders was put into the dungeon for being a witch. She escapes and heads toward the forest to escape prison time.
- The picture of Cinders on the book cover does not match how she looks in the rest of the book. She has super frizzy hair and a more disheveled look, which matches her character description. Sparks and Brian are not colored according to their character descriptions. The colors on the cover look nice, but don’t match the descriptions.
Other Books in Series (At Time of Posting):
- Book 2 – Cinders and Sparks: Fairies in the Forest
- Book 3 – Cinders and Sparks: Goblins and Gold