Whatever After 5 – Bad Hair Day

Bad Hair Day is book five of Sarah Mlynowski's Whatever After series, a fairy tale comedy for 8 year olds in which Rapunzel gets a VERY bad haircut.

What happens

Abby has had a rotten day. She's won the class spelling bee two years running and this year she came ninth. The word that did it was cinnamon. Worse, she cried at school.

Her little brother Jonah knows what'll cheer her up. At midnight the mirror in their basement can swallow them into a fairy tale. Abby says no. Jonah tricks her into it anyway, and their new puppy Prince dives in ahead of them.

They land on a hillside and hear singing. It's coming from a tower with no door.

You can guess whose. And who could resist shouting the famous line up at that window? Down comes the braid, and Abby climbs it like the rope in PE. Jonah follows with the puppy under one arm.

He's wearing his new football boots.

By the time he gets to the top the braid is ripped to bits. Abby is sure she can tidy it up with a pair of nail scissors (she's cut her dolls' hair plenty of times, so how hard can it be?). A lot of cheerful snipping later one side stops at Rapunzel's shoulder, the other at her chin, and there's a fringe nobody asked for.

Now the prince has nothing to climb. Neither do Abby and Jonah, who are still up there when the witch rides in and calls for the hair.

It's very funny. The puppy barks every time anyone says "prince", so the prince in the story has to be called Pickles instead. Jonah would also like to know why a proper witch has to go off and fetch a ladder.

There's something kind going on underneath. Abby has just found out she isn't the best at the thing she was proudest of. Rapunzel thinks her hair was the only special thing about her. If your reader takes it hard when they don't come top, they'll probably feel for both of them.

Abby gives Jonah the old Grimm version on the hillside, and in that one the prince is blinded by thorns. It's over quickly and Jonah is more interested in the magic tears.

What to read next

If Abby and Jonah are new to you, Fairest of All is the very first trip through the mirror. Abby is the new girl in Smithville, nobody there plays tag the way she does and Jonah wakes her in the night to say the big mirror downstairs is hissing.