The Heart of Glass

Vivian French's The Heart of Glass is a funny fairy-tale adventure for 10 year olds about a vanished girl, a troll with four arms and a deal that should never have been made.

What happens

Gracie Gillypot and her friend Prince Marcus have gone dwarf-spotting in the Unreliable Forest. The trees there don't stay put (tie your hankie to one and it hops behind an oak). Gracie leans against a tree for a moment and disappears.

Meanwhile the dwarves are in a pickle. They have to dig enough gold for a whole pile of crowns for a royal wedding, so they borrow a troll from King Thab. Clod has four arms, a spade in each hand and he digs like a machine. The price? One pretty princess.

And then there's Princess Marigold, who thinks Marcus is WONDERFUL. She borrows her sister's dress and pony cart without asking and drives out to the border, so Marcus can rescue her on his way home. She even brings cushions for the two of them to sit on. Can you guess how well that goes?

It's book three in Tales from the Five Kingdoms, and it's packed with the same brilliant characters. Marlon the bat calls everyone "kiddo". Gubble the troll walks straight through a wall when the back door won't behave. Even the path outside the House of the Ancient Crones has to be told to STAY, like a puppy.

It's properly laugh-out-loud, and a lot of the jokes land for grown-ups too. Great-Aunt Hortense is a favourite. She'd rather be anywhere than listening to Marigold talk about dresses, and she corrects her grammar mid-sulk.

There's a darker thread under the fun, which gives the story a real edge. Mullius, the last of the Old Trolls, guards a mysterious iron box and mutters about blood and crushing things. And the crones suddenly remember an old prophecy about a troll king and a girl like Gracie. It's more menace than horror, but the trolls are genuinely scary.

What to read next

If you've got a reader who likes their fairy tales turned upside down, it's worth going back to where Gracie's story begins. The Robe of Skulls opens with her shut in her stepfather's cellar for the crime of smiling, until a very chatty bat drops by.