SATA
ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy
WORK NOTES: Bookpage
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.anneursu.com/
CITY: Minneapolis
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
LAST VOLUME: SATA 344
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/122302.Anne_Ursu
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Minneapolis, MN; daughter of John J. Ursu and Mary Ursu; children: Dash (son).
EDUCATION:Brown University, degree.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. Worked in a bookstore; Hamline University, Minneapolis, MN, instructor in M.F.A. program in writing for children and young adults. Former theater critic for Pioneer Press, Minneapolis, MN, and City Pages, Minneapolis; Phoenix (newspaper), Portland, ME, former arts writer.
AVOCATIONS:Minnesota Twins baseball.
AWARDS:Minnesota Book Award, and Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, both 2002, both for Spilling Clarence; 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing selection, New York Public Library, 2011, Best Children’s Books of the Year list, Bank Street College of Education, and Notable Children’s Books in the English Language Arts, National Council of Teachers of English, both 2012, all for Breadcrumbs; McKnight Fellowship in children’s literature, 2013; 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing selection, Horace Mann Upstanders Award, New York Public Library, and National Book Award nomination, both 2013, and Best Children’s Books of the Year list, Bank Street College of Education, 2014, all for The Real Boy.
WRITINGS
Blogger at www.bat-girl.com until 2007. Contributor of reviews and articles to periodicals, including various newspapers and Glamour magazine.
The Lost Girl is being adapted for a television series by Flower Films Production Company.
SIDELIGHTS
Anne Ursu is the author of several works for middle-grade readers, including Breadcrumbs and The Real Boy, that incorporate fairy-tale motifs and elements of magic. In an International Literacy Association interview with Ernest Cox, Ursu remarked, “I love writing fantasy because it reaches kids on many levels—they are at a point where they are trying to figure out the world around them, and so reading about a fantasy world feels very relevant. And it tickles and celebrates their great capacity for imagination and for discovery.”
Ursu began her career writing for adults before turning her attention to a younger reading audience with her “Cronus Chronicles” novels. In the series, Ursu draws readers into a world peopled by characters from Greek myth and legend. There, modern-day characters find themselves embarking on a challenging and sometimes frightening quest that leads them from the depths of Hades’ underworld to the heights of Mount Olympus, home of the gods.
Ursu begins her “Cronus Chronicles” with The Shadow Thieves, which finds thirteen-year-old Charlotte Mielswetzski teaming up with her visiting cousin Zee and her English teacher Mr. Metos to discover the origin of the strange illness that has rendered most of Zee’s schoolmates comatose. A trip to the underworld leads the trio to the source of the plague: Philonecron, an immortal demi-demon who has tapped into the students’ spirits as a means of animating the shadow army with which he hopes to overthrow Hades, god of the underworld. Battles with animated skeletons, vampires, and harpies provide high points in Ursu’s humorous, Greek-inspired story, which features illustrations by Eric Fortune.
Writing in Horn Book, Anita L. Burkam deemed The Shadow Thieves a “fast-paced action adventure” in which Charlotte’s “irreverently casual” narration contains “a ridiculous exaggeration that pleasantly leavens the danger.” In Booklist, Holly Koelling offered a similar sentiment, noting that the teen’s narrative tone contains “such unabashed cheerfulness and gusto that readers will find much to enjoy.” “With a wit and cynicism that will enchant most readers, Ursu weaves an extraordinary tale,” concluded School Library Journal reviewer Lisa Marie Williams in an assessment of The Shadow Thieves, and a Kirkus Reviews writer dubbed the book “a fun and funny tale of youthful heroism.”
The “Cronus Chronicles” continues with The Siren Song, as Charlotte and Zee endure the pressures of typical teen life, including being grounded for not phoning in to their parents while busy adventuring in the underworld. Not surprisingly, Philonecron decides to continue his evil plans, and he also taps the power of his grandfather, the sea god Poseidon, to exact revenge on the two teen upstarts. Although they survive the battle that follows, in The Immortal Fire, Charlotte and Zee must team up with the ancient brotherhood of the Prometheans and undertake the journey to Mount Olympus to (with any luck) find a way to balance the punitive power of the ancient pantheon of volatile Greek gods.
Despite its focus on a pivotal battle, The Siren Song is “witty, well paced and fun,” according to a Kirkus Reviews writer, and in Booklist, Koelling asserted that Ursu’s second “Cronus Chronicles” installment features an equal measure of “imagination, wit, and rambunctiousness.” According to another Kirkus Reviews critic, The Immortal Fire “balances effectively between ironic distance and a heartwarming story of friendship” and Ursu’s references to Greek mythology and the writings of Homer give a nod to those middle-graders who have studied these subjects. With its “deft blend of intricate plot development, flippant tone, and a fresh twist on an ancient theme,” The Immortal Fire leads readers to the series’ “winning finish,” asserted Alison Follos in her School Library Journal review.
Based on Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy tale “The Snow Queen,” Breadcrumbs finds Minnesota fifth-grader Hazel starting a new school now that her adoptive parents are divorced and she and her mom have moved to a new town. The ten-year-old counts on Jack, the boy next door and her first new friend, to help her make the transition, but after a strange accident, Jack begins to snub her. When Hazel looks out one day to see her good friend seated in a sled pulled by wolves and driven into a nearby forest by a strange woman with a deathly white pallor, she determines to follow him. The woods turn out to be magic woods, however, and the woman turns out to be the icy Snow Queen. The preteen rises to the challenge, nonetheless, and her path through the dark and sinister northern forest is made the richer by Ursu’s allusions to fairy stories as well as several classics of children’s literature.
Featuring artwork by Erin McGuire, Breadcrumbs combines “polished prose [with] … a carefully crafted story,” noted Carolyn Phelan in Booklist. Hazel is a “richly imaginative fifth-grader,” noted a Publishers Weekly critic, and the story Ursu crafts around the girl “is beautifully written and wholly original.” In Kirkus Reviews a critic praised Ursu’s use of a third-person narrator in recounting Hazel’s is experiences, describing Breadcrumbs as a “multi-layered, artfully crafted, transforming testament to the power of friendship.” For School Library Journal contributor Sue Giffard, the novel’s mix of fantasy and “psychological realism” in dealing with “Hazel’s feelings make it a fine choice for readers who prefer realistic fiction,” and Deirdre F. Baker wrote in her Horn Book review that Breadcrumbs benefits from a prose that is “pungent, humorous, and vivid.”
In The Real Boy, Ursu “presents a rich world filled with natural magic and a troubling origin story of sacrifice,” in the words of Booklist critic Sarah Hunter. Oscar works as an assistant to Caleb, the last magician in the Barrow, which encircles the wondrous city of Asteri. Unable to interact meaningfully with other people, Oscar prefers to spend his day gathering and processing herbs and caring for his master’s cats. When Caleb leaves on urgent business and his apprentice is killed, Oscar must take charge of the shop and seeks help from his new friend, Callie. Worse still, the children of Asteri are stricken with a terrible illness, prompting Oscar and Callie to investigate its mysterious cause.
The Real Boy “is a tale replete with memorable settings and weighty issues,” Caitlin Augusta remarked in School Library Journal, and a contributor in Publishers Weekly predicted that readers “will savor Ursu’s allusions to well-known fairy tales—most significantly, Pinocchio—and appreciate the many well-turned phrases.” “It’s all highly rewarding and involving, with a tight plot, resonant themes, a gripping adventure, a clearly limned fantasy landscape, and a sympathetic main character,” stated Martha V. Parravano in Horn Book.
The Lost Girl offers “a beautiful, timeless tale of love conquering darkness in the midst of mystery and the angst of change,” according to School Library Journal reviewer Erin Reilly-Sanders. Identical twins Iris and Lark have been inseparable since birth. As they prepare to enter fifth grade, however, all that changes: their parents and teachers decide the girls should be assigned different classrooms and attend different after-school activities. As practical-minded Iris grows worried about her sensitive and artistic sibling, who begins to lose confidence in her abilities, she is also drawn into a mystery involving a peculiar antique shop owner’s search for his missing sister.
Critics voiced their appreciation for The Lost Girl. “Ursu unleashes a sharp, timely age-appropriate critique of the myriad ways in which patriarchal culture devalues female agency, especially that of young girls,” Fiona Hartley-Kroeger observed in the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, and Julia Smith, writing in Booklist, similarly noted that the author “tak[es] great care to cast girls in an empowering light and as authors (and heroes) of their own stories.” A contributor in Publishers Weekly also praised the novel, calling it “as intriguing as it is eerie.”
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The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, published in 2021. is yet another fantasy novel for middle-grade readers. Set in the kingdom of Illyria, the novel features twelve-year-old Marya Lupu, who is often overlooked because of her brother, Luka. He is the golden boy, destined to become a powerful sorcerer. Indeed, all the boys in the kingdom have the potential to use strong magic to protect the country against the mysterious Dread as well as the witches of Kel. Thus, no one really has high expectations for Marya, and when a mistake lands her in Dragomir Academy, a boarding school for troubled girls, no one–except Marya–is surprised. At Dragomir, the young girls are expected to put their past lives behind them. However, the longer she is there, the more Marya and other girls begin to notice inconsistencies in the stories that are fed to them, and she and others also begin to learn about the magic that only the males of the kingdom wield and also about the Dread. What is learned poses a threat to the very balance upon which Illyria has been built.
Writing in the online Mpls.St.Paul, Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl had high praise for this seventh novel for younger readers: “In The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, Ursu continues her signature style of layering a story of brave children forced into adventure and daring feats upon a deft consideration of the biggest philosophical and moral problems at the core of human existence.” Similarly, Booklist reviewer Julia Smith felt that readers will “welcome Marya’s determination to assert herself as powerful in her own right.” Likewise, a Kirkus Reviews critic lauded this “remarkably raw and honest look at the emotional and psychological consequences of living under patriarchal ideology,” and concluded: “A wonderful and inspiring feminist fantasy.”
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, December 1, 2001, Kristine Huntley, review of Spilling Clarence, p. 631; March 1, 2006, Holly Koelling, review of The Shadow Thieves, p. 94; November 1, 2007, Holy Koelling, review of The Siren Song, p. 48; November 15, 2011, Carolyn Phelan, review of Breadcrumbs, p. 56; October 1, 2013, Sarah Hunter, review of The Real Boy, p. 96; February 1, 2019, Julia Smith, review of The Lost Girl, p. 77; September 1, 2021, Julia Smith, review of The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, p. 78.
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, December, 2018, Fiona Hartley-Kroeger, review of The Lost Girl, p. 184.
Horn Book, March-April, 2006, Anita L. Burkam, review of The Shadow Thieves, p. 197; July-August, 2007, Anita L. Burkam, review of The Siren Song, p. 406; January-February, 2012, Deirdre F. Baker, review of Breadcrumbs, p. 104; September-October, 2013, Martha V. Parravano, review of The Real Boy, p. 114.
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2001, review of Spilling Clarence, p. 1578; October 15, 2002, review of The Disapparation of James, p. 1502; March 1, 2006, review of The Shadow Thieves, p. 241; June 15, 2007, review of The Siren Song; May 1, 2009, review of The Immortal Fire; July 15, 2011, review of Breadcrumbs; July 15, 2013, review of The Real Boy; December 15, 2018, review of The Lost Girl; August 15, 2021, review of The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy.
Kliatt, May, 2004, Nola Theiss, review of The Disapparation of James, p. 24.
Library Journal, November 15, 2001, Christine Perkins, review of Spilling Clarence, p. 99.
New York Times Book Review, July 28, 2002, Jeff Waggoner, review of Spilling Clarence, p. 17.
Publishers Weekly, November 12, 2001, review of Spilling Clarence, p. 34; October 28, 2002, review of The Disapparation of James, p. 46; August 29, 2011, review of Breadcrumbs, p. 66; September 16, 2013, review of The Real Boy, p. 55; November 19, 2018, review of The Lost Girl, p. 95; February 4, 2019, Sue Corbett, “Finding Magic In Middle Grade,” author interview, p. 26.
School Library Journal, April, 2006, Lisa Marie Williams, review of The Shadow Thieves, p. 149; August, 2007, Sharon Rawlins, review of The Siren Song, p. 127; September, 2009, Alison Follos, review of The Immortal Fire, p. 175; November, 2011, Sue Giffard, review of Breadcrumbs, p. 141; November, 2013, Caitlin Augusta, review of The Real Boy, p. 106; December, 2018, Erin Reilly-Sanders, review of The Lost Girl, p. 77.
ONLINE
Anne Ursu website, http://www.anneursu.com (April 1, 2022).
Bookreporter.com, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (January 2, 2002), Kate Ayers, review of Spilling Clarence and author interview.
Disability in Kidlit, http://disabilityinkidlit.com/ (April 13, 2015), Corinne Duyvis, author interview.
Hamline University website, https://www.hamline.edu/ (April 1, 2022), author profile.
International Literacy Association website, https://literacyworldwide.org/ (March 3, 2014), Ernest Cox, “5 Questions with … Anne Ursu.”
Mpls.St.Paul, https://mspmag.com/ (October 24, 2021), Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, “Anne Ursu’s Magical Thinking.”
Pioneer Press website, https://www.twincities.com/ (February 10, 2019), Mary Ann Grossmann, author profile.
Powells Books website, http://www.powells.com/ (March 15, 2007), author interview.
Walden Media website, https://www.walden.com/ (March 25, 2019), author interview.*
Anne Ursu is the author of acclaimed novels The Lost Girl, Breadcrumbs, and The Real Boy, which was longlisted for the National Book Award. The recipient of the McKnight Fellowship in Children’s Literature, Anne is also a member of the faculty at Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. She lives in Minneapolis with her family and an ever-growing number of cats.
Anne Ursu
Graduate Adjunct - CLA
BIOGRAPHY
Anne Ursu is the author of six middle grade fantasies. Her new book, The Lost Girl, has garnered three starred reviews and was selected as a Publisher Weekly's Best Middle Grade Book of 2019. The Lost Girl is also one of two titles being adapted into an hour-long TV series under Flower Films Production Company. Ursu's middle grade novel The Real Boy won the Horace Mann Upstanders Award and was on the longlist for the 2013 National Book Award. Breadcrumbs, a contemporary retelling of "The Snow Queen," was named one of the best books of 2011 by Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com, School Library Journal, Bulletin for Center of Children's Books, and the Chicago Public Library. She is also the recipient of the 2013-2014 McKnight Fellowship in Children's Literature.
Anne has been at Hamline since 2008. She lives in Minneapolis with her family and copious cats.
PUBLICATIONS
The Lost Girl
Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
The Real Boy
Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Breadcrumbs
Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
The Shadow Thieves: Cronus Chronicles 1
Atheneum Books
The Siren Song: Cronus Chronicles 2
Atheneum Books
The Immortal Fire: Cronus Chronicles 3
Atheneum Books
QUOTE: “In The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, Ursu continues her signature style of layering a story of brave children forced into adventure and daring feats upon a deft consideration of the biggest philosophical and moral problems at the core of human existence.”
Anne Ursu’s Magical Thinking
Anne Ursu is one of the country’s leading fantasy writers for kids, and her seventh kids’ book just might set fires.
by Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl
October 24, 2021
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Anne Ursu reading on a park bench
Photos by Caitlin Abrams
Anne Ursu and her enduring magic (and her seven middle grade fantasy reads)
Once upon a time in a Minneapolis winter, it snowed and all the neighborhood kids headed out with their sleds. Yes, this happens today, but it happened once upon a time, too.
When much-awarded kid-lit author Anne Ursu was one of those Minneapolis neighborhood kids, she took her sled and headed to the particular bowl ringed with hills that everyone in Kenwood knows. It’s just north of Lake of the Isles, right past the tennis courts, above the summer softball fields, where the big hill is crowned by native oaks and at least one pine tree where an owl lives (you know from the mouse bones scattered below). A sledding hill that at the top shows downtown skyscrapers—just the tops of them, like they’re floating. A sledding hill that, when you slide down, lands you in a bowl of snow so high-sided you see nothing but snow and trees and other kids on sleds—so far from any landmark or anchor besides the crystal drift that you may as well be in Narnia.
Many, many children of Minneapolis have had this experience on this exact sledding hill. Thousands? Tens of thousands? But only Anne Ursu pursued the thought: What if the woods at the top of the Kenwood sledding hill really were enchanted? And what if a neighborhood girl whose parents had just separated had to go into those woods to save her best friend? Only Ursu wrote Breadcrumbs—and only Ursu has had her version of the Minneapolis Kenwood sledding hill magic stocked in libraries coast to coast and translated into Chinese, Thai, French, and German.
“It’s just a really good sledding hill,” Ursu tells me when I meet her at Gigi’s Cafe Wyrd, the south Minneapolis coffee shop on 36th Street. Ursu has bright eyes and long curly hair and is frequently seen at Gigi’s, for that’s where she’s written significant chunks of all her books of the last decade, including her newest, out this month, The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy. “I’d drop off my son, come here, order breakfast; if things went well, order lunch,” she explains.
It’s a hot late summer day, and we complain as Minnesotans will about how we both prefer snow to heat. But Ursu has a different reason than mere beauty, mere comfort. “An editor came to Hamline, where I teach, and said, ‘I love to come to Minnesota in January. I think magic is closer to the surface in the snow,’” Ursu recalls. “And I thought, That’s right. It is. Snow to me means home. It was hard to live anywhere without snow. It’s real-life magic. It’s home.”
Ursu knows magic. She’s world-famous in magic, dragons, potions, talking crows, enchanted wolves, and everything that life really ought to have more of thanks to her heavy-hitter string of children’s books. These include her big best sellers Breadcrumbs (Minneapolis girl saves best friend from the white witch), The Lost Girl (enmeshed identical twins must redefine their identities in the fifth grade while defeating a magician who is stealing the world’s art treasures, including the Walker Art Center’s Spoonbridge and Cherry), and National Book Award nominee The Real Boy (a tale of a boy so awkward he suspects he’s really a wooden puppet and the magical shenanigans he overcomes). All of these are what are known as “middle grade” books in the book business—that is, books in the general size and shape of those in the Harry Potter series—big, rich chapter books about child heroes but without the sex and violence found in what are known as “young adult” books, like the Twilight series. Ursu’s new book, her seventh middle grade fantasy for kids, The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, is the most Potter-esque of all. It takes place at a school in a castle-like estate, and there are wizards—but it’s actually much more like Ursu’s other books, which we’ll return to in a moment, than it is like Hogwarts.
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Writer Anne Ursu in the woods
Writer Anne Ursu finds enchantments in woods that others may miss.
For now, let’s consider how very Minneapolis Ursu is, because it is nice to notice when a daughter of the neighborhood does good. Ursu grew up across from Lake of the Isles. She had a spaniel named Big Red who liked to escape and go swimming in the muck and return stinking. She’d trail her big brother and his pack around the neighborhood on bikes: They had a particular tree they’d use as a catcher, and they bought candy in the store that now houses Birchbark Books. Her dad worked at 3M, and her mom was in school to be a psychologist.
Nearly every Saturday morning, young Anne went with her mom to the Walker Library in Uptown—the old one, when it was in the big building with the pillars across from the current Walker Library, as well as the one that sat underground at the current site—and while her mom studied, young Anne would wander the stacks, plucking out a load to take home.
“My mom said I’d come home with a stack of books, disappear into my room, and come out Monday with them all read,” she says. “That’s part of why I write for kids now, the way I just inhaled books at that age, middle grade books. They meant so much to me. I remember saying, in sixth grade or so, ‘When I grow up, I want to write books like this.’ My mom said, ‘You say that because these are the books you’re reading now. When you grow up, you’ll probably want to read and write other types of books.’ Nope! Turns out I was right.” She particularly remembers loving the books of Maud Hart Lovelace, who also lived within walking distance of the old Walker Library and later filled some of its shelves with her girl-adventure Betsy-Tacy books.
Ursu continued a very recognizable southwest Minneapolis girlhood—Lake Country for grade school, Blake after; birthday cakes from the Lincoln Del; a run in a locally touring theater company as a child actor playing Charles Wallace in a production of Madeleine L’Engle’s anti-conformist A Wrinkle in Time series.
“Seventy-two performances later, I had absolutely inhaled and integrated the structure,” she recalls. “Because I write fantasy, everyone always asks about Lord of the Rings, but my best friend who lived around the block read them all when I was in second grade, and I couldn’t get through them. Only later did I realize my friend was just a genius. I did read my dad’s copies of fairy tales, including Grimms’ and Hans Christian Andersen and the Greek myths, all the time. I mean, I read them over and over, over and over. They’re part of my literary DNA. And I definitely watched Star Wars at least 100,000 times with my brother!”
Well-saturated with Star Wars, fairy tales, A Wrinkle in Time, and memories of sledding, Ursu headed east to Brown University. She returned four years later after completing her bachelor’s degree—but also having been leveled by an autoimmune disease that rendered her periodically spinning-dizzy and flat-out exhausted. “It changes things,” she notes. “I was very driven growing up, but all of that sort of goes away when you don’t know if you’re going to be able to function from one day to the next.”
Still, she started an internship at City Pages and worked as the theater critic for a year before deciding her health wouldn’t let her make those commitments. “It sounds counterintuitive, but being sick, I could only rely on myself—writing is a really good career path for that. And one of the things that happens in fantasy is that things come out of the air and happen to you out of nowhere, and everything changes. Which is a lot like illness. I have wondered if that’s part of why I’m so drawn to fantasy—it feels realistic to my life.”
Ursu wrote two novels for adults, each with magical elements; married a graduate student; moved to Maine, California, Massachusetts, Ohio; and then returned to Minneapolis again, divorced with a 3-year-old son. “All I wanted was to rent an apartment in Linden Hills so I could be near Wild Rumpus and take my son there as much as we wanted.” And so she did. Today Ursu has a house that’s walking distance from Wild Rumpus, teaches in the low-residency MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Hamline, and actively resists all compliments and flattery.
She’s only the third most important children’s fantasy writer in town, she insists, after Newbery winners Kate DiCamillo, a national treasure, and Kelly Barnhill. (“I don’t know how Anne does it,” says Barnhill. “Her books have eyes and teeth and beating hearts.”) No, no, says Ursu. “Only two Newberys for fantasy writing have been awarded in the last 20 years, and they both went to Minneapolis writers who were not me. Kate and Kelly are amazing. Amazing.” Also, insists Ursu, pay no attention to the fact that Drew Barrymore optioned The Lost Girl for a TV show; these things never go anywhere. Also, probably best to not mention that Dragomir was awarded the prestigious Kirkus Star—prepublication—which tells librarians, Pay attention; this one is really good.
It is. In The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, Ursu continues her signature style of layering a story of brave children forced into adventure and daring feats upon a deft consideration of the biggest philosophical and moral problems at the core of human existence. Dragomir stars young Marya, resident of a kingdom where a certain number of boys every year manifest magic and then are elevated to great wealth and power. Marya, high-spirited and a great disappointment to her mother, finds affection with another family that she babysits for and learns to weave from them. The mother of that family introduces her to concepts like text and subtext and teaches her to examine stories for who they serve as well as what they say. When Marya is suddenly summoned to a mountain school where problem girls are reeducated (and sometimes disappear), that skill for disentangling stories and motives comes in handy.
“I remember tweeting during the Kavanaugh hearings something like, ‘My next book is going to be just a lot of girls running around and lighting fires for 150 pages,’” laughs Ursu as we sit at Gigi’s. “This isn’t that, but it’s basically the feeling of that. I needed to deal with the Kavanaugh hearings somehow, and I was bingeing Project Runway when I thought I heard the phrase the headmaster’s monster. It clearly wasn’t actually a phrase in the show, but it came to me and sparked something in my head that became the story of a kingdom where men are super-valued for having magic, and women aren’t.”
The new book stands proudly beside Ursu’s other works, which always blend page-turning kid adventure with adult moral philosophy. The Real Boy, for instance, is the story of an awkward boy, the monsters he battles, and the world he saves, but it’s also about what a society loses when it banishes neurodivergence and the sick. The Lost Girl may be about identical twins living in Linden Hills who save the world from a hoarding magic art thief, but it’s also about relational identity as a pillar of personality, for good and ill.
What’s a nice daughter of Kenwood doing smuggling kids the biggest ideas in the world? I ask Ursu this as I am wrapping up my interview.
“That’s what’s so great about children’s literature,” she explains. “Because no one is paying attention, because the adult world doesn’t take it seriously, it has the power to be very subversive. That’s a power and a privilege. It’s also an opportunity to reinforce things that are harmful, so you have to be careful. My memory of being a kid was so much of being confused by everything, of things happening and not understanding them, of processing them later and wishing I’d had words and frameworks. That’s what children’s books can do—put big things into words and give kids frameworks for understanding, whether it’s an interaction at school or a trash fire in the country.”
With that, Ursu returns to her life being a Minneapolis mom writing in coffee shops, teaching other writers, and now and then spying her dad out her window because he’s dropped by to help with the garden. “I love being near my family,” she says. “My family and Wild Rumpus and Red Balloon, the community of writers, snow, ice—the magic of Minneapolis is up at the surface for me.”
Anne Ursu
USA flag (b.1973)
Anne Ursu's most recent book is BREADCRUMBS (HarperCollins/Walden Pond Press), a modernday fairy tale for middle grade readers. Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen," BREADCRUMBS is a story of a Minneapolis girl who follows her best friend into a strange fairy-tale woods, and discovers there that fantasy is no escape.
Anne is also the author of the Cronus Chronicles (Atheneum), a middle grade fantasy trilogy about two cousins who unwittingly fall into a battle with Greek gods. The three books are THE SHADOW THIEVES, THE SIREN SONG, and THE IMMORTAL FIRE. In addition, she has written two novels for adults: SPILLING CLARENCE and THE DISAPPARATION OF JAMES (Hyperion). She teaches at the Hamline University's Masters of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Anne lives in Minneapolis with her young son and neurotic cats.
Genres: Children's Fiction, Science Fiction, Young Adult Fantasy
Series
Cronus Chronicles
1. The Shadow Thieves (2006)
2. The Siren Song (2007)
3. The Immortal Fire (2009)
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Novels
Spilling Clarence (2001)
The Disapparation of James (2003)
Breadcrumbs (2011)
The Real Boy (2013)
The Lost Girl (2019)
The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy (2021)
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Novellas
Max Swings for the Fences (2012)
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Series contributed to
Star Wars : Clone Wars (with Lou Anders, Tom Angleberger, Preeti Chhibber, Zoraida Córdova, Sarah Beth Durst, Greg Van Eekhout, Jason Fry, Yoon Ha Lee and Rebecca Roanhorse)
Star Wars The Clone Wars Anthology (2020)
Anne Ursu
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Anne Ursu is an American novelist and children's writer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Contents
1 Biography
2 Awards and honors
3 Bibliography
3.1 The Cronus Chronicles
4 References
5 External links
Biography
She went to Brown University.
Ursu's first novel, Spilling Clarence, is about a drug that wafts through the air of a small Minnesota town. The drug had a strong effect on the town's residents, who then suffered from visceral memories and stupor. Her second novel, The Disapparation of James, is about a boy disappearing during a stage magic trick.
Breadcrumbs, a middle-grade novel published by Walden Pond Press, was released September 27, 2011. Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen," Breadcrumbs is a story of the struggle to hold on, and of the things we leave behind.
Ursu has also written a trilogy for middle-grade readers, the Cronus Chronicles, (published by Atheneum), involving two cousins' adventures in the realms of Greek mythology. The individual titles are The Shadow Thieves, The Siren Song, and The Immortal Fire.
She published another middle-grade fantasy in 2013, The Real Boy, which was long listed for the National Book Award.
She teaches at Hamline University's low residency MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults.[1]
Ursu is also the former author of a popular sports blog about the Minnesota Twins called bat-girl.com. In 2007, she posted on the site that she no longer had time to maintain it, saying: "The time has come to end this wonderful adventure. I had hoped to be able to keep it up with Dash, but I simply do not have time to do this blog well, and there is no point in doing it any other way."[2]
Awards and honors
2013, McKnight Fellowship in Children's Literature[3]
2013, The Real Boy, long listed for the National Book Award
Bibliography
Spilling Clarence, Hyperion, 2003—Winner of the 2003 New Voice (first-time author) award from the Minnesota Book Awards.
"The President's New Clothes," Politically Inspired, MacAdam/Cage, 2003
The Disapparation of James, Hyperion, 2004. As recommended by Nancy Pearl in More Book Lust.
Breadcrumbs, HarperCollins, 2011.
The Real Boy, Walden Pond Press, 2013
Articles in the Washington Post Book World, the StarTribune, on Salon.com, and ESPN.com
The Lost Girl, Walden Pond Press, 2019
The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, Walden Pond Press, 2021
The Cronus Chronicles
The Shadow Thieves, Atheneum, 2006.
The Siren Song, Atheneum, 2007.
The Immortal Fire, Atheneum, 2009.
QUOTE: “remarkably raw and honest look at the emotional and psychological consequences of living under patriarchal ideology,” and concluded: “A wonderful and inspiring feminist fantasy.”
Ursu, Anne THE TROUBLED GIRLS OF DRAGOMIR ACADEMY Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins (Children's None) $17.99 10, 12 ISBN: 978-0-06-227512-7
In the kingdom of Illyria, the lives of young girls are of little consequence.
Twelve-year-old Marya Lupu has always been told there is no place for her in the world, whereas her older brother, Luka, has been primed all his life to become one of the rare, respected sorcerers who protect the realm against the mysterious Dread and the wicked witches of Kel. A mistake lands Marya at the Dragomir Academy, an isolated boarding school for troubled girls, where she and her classmates are expected to reform themselves and leave the past behind. But the more time passes, the more the girls spot the holes in the fabric of the stories they are told. Through Ursu’s hallmark thoughtful and inspiring writing, readers delve into a story that seamlessly combines intriguing worldbuilding that is full of magic with a feminist perspective that interrogates the systemic oppression at society’s core. Marya’s developing relationships with her classmates as well as with her brother form the beating heart of the book. But it’s Marya’s inner conflict as she asks the question, “Who does the story serve?” and considers what she has always been told about herself that elevates this tale into unmissable territory, with its remarkably raw and honest look at the emotional and psychological consequences of living under patriarchal ideology. Marya is pale skinned in a world with characters of varying skin tones.
A wonderful and inspiring feminist fantasy. (map) (Fantasy. 8-12)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Ursu, Anne: THE TROUBLED GIRLS OF DRAGOMIR ACADEMY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A671783060/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=443f4867. Accessed 17 Mar. 2022.
QUOTE: “welcome Marya’s determination to assert herself as powerful in her own right.”
The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy. By Anne Ursu. Oct. 2021. 432p. HarperCollins/Walden Pond, $17.99 (9780062275127). Gr. 5-8.
In Illyria, sorcerers (always men) wield magic to keep people safe and thus hold powerful positions within the land. Therefore, it's a matter of life-changing importance when Marya's brother is pegged as having magic potential. Marya's only job during his magic assessment is to stay out of sight--a task at which she fails spectacularly. The disastrous visit results in Marya's getting sent to Dragomir Academy. With a motto of "Character above All," Dragomir houses girls from all walks of life in supposed need of discipline. Marya struggles to accept her new life there but embraces the opportunity to make friends and receive an education. A mystery of a missing girl is threaded through the school story line, which Marya investigates only to unearth a massive revelation about the school's true purpose. Ursu is heavy-handed in her feminist fantasy's critique of gender inequality, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Readers present for the tale's magical trappings and interwoven intrigue won't be disappointed, and they'll welcome Marya's determination to assert herself as powerful in her own right.--Julia Smith
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Smith, Julia. "The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy." Booklist, vol. 118, no. 1, 1 Sept. 2021, p. 78. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A675268180/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=aebffaaa. Accessed 17 Mar. 2022.