Book Giveaway: A BOY IN THE FAIRY WORLD by Kate Korsh

In February, I featured Kate Korsh’s debut chapter book series, OONA BRAMBLEGOOP’S SIDEWAYS MAGIC, A Girl in the Fairy World, illustrated by Marta Altés and published by Putnam (BYR). Today, we have the second book in OONA BRAMBLEGOOP’S SIDEWAYS MAGIC series, A BOY IN THE FAIRY WORLD. Putnam(BYR) has agreed to send a copy of the book with one lucky winner in the US.

All you have to do to get in the running is leave a comment. Reblog, tweet, or talk about it on Facebook with a link, and you will get additional chances to win. Just let me know other things you do to share the good news, so I can put the right amount of tickets in my basket for you. Sharing on Facebook, Twitter, or reblogging really helps spread the word about a new book. So, thanks for helping Kate and Marta.

If you have signed up to follow my blog and receive it every day, please let me know when you leave a comment, and I will give you an extra ticket. Thanks!

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

In the second book of this hilarious, highly illustrated chapter book series, lovable Underwear Fairy Oona has to call on all of her sideways magic when she accidentally leads a human boy up to Blackberry Bog. Text and illustrations are printed in blue!

Oona loves being the Underwear Fairy, which means she gets to deliver magical safety undies with wedgie power that keeps human children from falling down and hurting themselves. But when she gets trapped in the human world by Marco, a boy who wants to take a photo of her to prove fairies are real, she’s horrified—don’t let humans see you is one of fairydom’s most important rules!

Luckily, her cousin Horace and best friend Lucy (also known as the Tooth Fairy) help her get free. But then things get even more disastrous—Marco follows them back up to Blackberry Bog!

Can Oona and her friends get Marco safely back to the human world before he does too much damage—and before the Fairy Council finds out?

Packed with Fun Fairy Facts, humor, and lots of heart, this magical series celebrates finding friendship and your place in the world, even if you fit in a little sideways.

BOOK JOURNEY:

Writing A BOY IN THE FAIRY WORLD was a very different experience from writing the first book in the OONA BRAMBLEGOOP series, NEWBIE FAIRY. And not just because I wasn’t such a newbie writer any more. The difference largely lay in the fact that writing a sequel has its own set of advantages and challenges. One perk in this process was that I was already good friends with all of the characters I was writing about, and their voices were already knocking around in my head. So I had a pretty clear grasp of how they would react to whatever situation I threw at them. Plus, I had the wonderful addition of the specificity and fun of Marta Altés’ illustrations in NEWBIE FAIRY to help inspire me, so drafting flowed quickly, especially the dialogue. I was able to delve into some of my favorite characters a lot more deeply, especially Marco, the human boy who is so fascinated by the fairies that he manages to follow them up the magical twisty slide into fairy world, and Molly, the head of the Fairy Council who can sometimes be a bit of a bossypants, but still has a vulnerable side.

Another bonus was related to the world-building. Writing fantasy is in large part about creating worlds. Oona’s fairy world is up in the clouds, hidden from human eyes by a magical layer of fairy slug slime. Why? Because that’s what I made up, just like everything else in the world! But once I got to the second book, all of that world-building stuff was already established, so it felt more real somehow, and became a great jumping off point. Adding on to that foundation was such fun, sort of like being an interior designer who gets to pick the furniture for a newly completed house. For example, I loved inserting additional quirky fairies into the world, like the Umbrella Fairy, who captures rain clouds in a net on days when humans are carrying umbrellas because he loves umbrellas too much to let them get wet, and the Crumb Fairy, who adds an additional handful of crumbs to humans’ favorite snacks so that they’ll last just a little bit longer. Brainstorming ideas like that for this book was a blast!

But I said advantages and challenges, right? One of the flip sides of the fun stuff was that I had to keep track of and apply all the rules and details I established in the first book to make sure that they were consistent in the second. Adhering to pre-existing truths of the world meant I didn’t always have quite as much flexibility in terms of tailoring a situation to fit where I wanted the plot to go. To be honest, though, that could also be an advantage, because I find that sometimes the best ideas come to me when I’m constrained. But I also had to take into account that some readers would encounter A BOY IN THE FAIRY WORLD as a stand-alone book. I therefore needed to sneak in all the essential information from the first book in as seamless a way as possible, so that new readers wouldn’t be confused, but also loyal readers of both books wouldn’t be bored by repetition.

The funny thing about being at this stage in my writing journey is that I’ve never had more in common with my husband than during the writing of this book. He is also a writer, but for TV. He’s always been an inspiration to me, but once I started A BOY IN THE FAIRY WORLD we felt more like writing peers than ever before. He was working on a pilot at the same time as I was working on the book, and there were many days when he’d be at work in his office and I’d be writing in the bedroom, and then we’d meet in the den to debrief with each other on how a scene or chapter was going. He was really tapped in to my process, because in many ways, having multiple books in a book series is similar to having multiple episodes in a show. If, for example, my husband revealed a specific detail about a character in the first season of his show in order to make a punchline work, that detail would still need to be true in season four, or the fans would surely notice. Similarly, he always spends a lot of time getting the “Previously On” recaps distilled to their essentials at the beginning of episodes of his show, just as I tended to the recap of information in my sequel. So we bonded on the overlap of tasks in this dimension of our work, and it was gratifying to have the leader of my support system really “get it.”

So many chapter books come as part of a series in the current market, I think largely because of the way children at this reading level can really devour books and quickly be looking for the next installment. Because of this, even though it was a total thrill for me to see NEWBIE FAIRY sitting on a library shelf, it always looked a little lonely. That’s why I’m so excited for A BOY IN THE FAIRY WORLD to join its partner, and with a complementing color palette to boot!

KATE’S BIO:

Kate Korsh had always enjoyed writing. She holds a BA in English Literature from Princeton, where she studied creative writing, and a master’s in psychology from Phillips Graduate University. She was influenced by her husband Aaron Korsh who turned writing into a career, becoming the television writer and creator of the USA Network series Suits (which was the record-breaking, most-streamed show of 2023 on Netflix). His journey inspired Kate to step out and begin her career as an author. Aaron is always the first set of eyes on any of Kate’s initial drafts.

Her writing can be found in L.A. Parent magazine, where she has published numerous articles. She was also an elementary school teacher for ten years, as well as being a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist.

By day, Kate Korsh has been a mild-mannered elementary school teacher, an insightful Marriage and Family Therapist, and a cuddly mother of two, with no magic whatsoever. But by night, she has studied the magical world of creative writing. Newbie Fairy is the culmination of her studies and her debut chapter book. Kate lives in Los Angeles with her husband and the aforementioned cuddle recipients, who now always seem to magically have clean underwear in their drawers.
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Kate lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children, who seem to magically always have clean underwear in their drawers.

MARTA’S BIO:

Marta Altés is the award-winning creator of My Grandpa, I am an Artist!, my New Home and The King Cat. She loves to tell stories and her love of illustration saw her study for a degree in Graphic Design in Barcelona. Marta moved to the UK to study for an MA in Children’s Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art (the best decision she ever made!) and graduated in 2011.

Marta Altés is a Spanish award-winning creator of many picture books. She studied graphic design in Barcelona and then an MA in Book Illustration at the Cambridge School of Art where she now teaches. Her touching story of the relationship between a grandfather and his grandson in her picture book My Grandpa won the Jack Ezra Keats New Illustrator Honour in the USA.

Marta has also won the Read it Again! Award and three Kate Greenaway Medal nominations. Her delightful picture book Little Monkey was chosen by Book Trust for their Time to read campaign and her The King Cat was chosen by Scottish Book Trust for their Read, Write, Count campaign. Marta’s latest book is New in Town and is published by Macmillan Children’s Books.

Since then she has seen her books translated into 13 different languages. MY GRANDPA won the Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Honour in the US and I AM AN ARTIST was longlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal. She’s also won the Read It Again! Award and the Nottingham Children’s Book Award and her first book NO! (Child’s Play) was shortlisted for the Peoples Book Prize and the Waterstones Picture Book Prize. Marta lives in London.

Kate, thank you for sharing your book and journey with us. Kids will love spending time again with Oona, the Newbie Underwear Fairy again with her friends whom young readers met in the first book. It is fun to see how the illustrations and lettering have changed from pink to blue ink in this new book for our new boy character, Marco. I am so happy that this second book in this series is out in bookstores now, and I am glad that the story is still funny and will keep kids giggling and laughing at the silly underwear magic.

When Oona’s extra fairy perception, or EFP for short, signals a Level 13 emergency in her head, Oona knows she needs to go into the human world. A boy named Marco needs replacement underwear full of AUTO WEDGIE magic to keep him safe. Marco is so clumsy that he’ll get banged up faster than dress shoes at recess without magic wedgies to snap him to attention. But there was just one problem. The sun is about to peek over the horizon, and fairies are forbidden to leave Blackberry Bog in the daytime, but if she waits until night, Marco would probably look like he’d been inside a giant pinball machine.Nope, she needs to go RIGHT NOW to restock his underwear drawer before he wakes up. When she opens Marco’s bedroom drawer and sees the perfectly round holes cut in his underwear, she realizes she has been set up, and a cage drops over her, trapping her inside and causing her to drop her magic wand – outside the cage. 

Her cousin and three slugs from the first book have followed her and come to her rescue. Oona says a spell: ” Slugs are a whole lot more slippery than me, but I have to get out of here to be free.”  The slugs help her get her wand into her hands and this starts the action, excitement, and fun. And the hijinks continue to the end of the book. Slugs, underwear, and other super-fun, sometimes-icky humor abounds in this series, bringing a fresh take on fairies perfect for kids who like a bit of messiness mixed with their magic. Just like the first book, Fun Fairy Facts are sprinkled throughout this book, and the blue illustrations Marta created provide children with entertaining visual pictures that will keep them reading more. I am sure children will see themselves in Oona and Marco and be inspired to keep trying to succeed even when things fail.

This is a very funny book, and kids love to laugh, which is one of the things parents love to hear, so it will be entertaining for everyone in the family. Everyone will love the blue illustrations, and I’m happy that Kate continued the Fun Fairy Facts sprinkled throughout the book as she did in the first story. This book is a perfect summer read for children 7 to 10 years old and their parents.

FUN FAIRY FACT: Fairy wands come in five models: Classic
Sparkle Star, Moondoggle, Horseshoe and Heart, Lightning
Up, and Basic Bagel. Classic Sparkle Star is the most popular,
but recently Basic Bagel has been selling like hotcakes,
or more accurately, like bagels.

Good Luck with the book.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy