Sarah Mlynowski’s Genie in a Bottle is the ninth Whatever After book, a funny fairy tale adventure for 8 year olds where one very tired girl gets one word of her wish wrong.<\/p>\n
Abby’s school is holding a read-a-thon. Whoever raises the most money gets to help choose new books for the library.<\/p>\n
She’s read nine books. She even read in the bath (the book is damp but readable). Her friend Frankie is on her twenty-first.<\/p>\n
Then Penny announces that her parents are giving a hundred dollars however little she reads. Penny has read one book. Penny would like to order horse books and fashion magazines.<\/p>\n
Abby has a secret reason for minding so much. The mirror in her basement is magic, and the fairy inside it is under a curse. Abby was going to ask for a book about breaking spells.<\/p>\n
So at midnight she wakes Jonah, her little brother, and they go through the mirror to look for magic there instead. Their dog Prince dives in first.<\/p>\n
They land in the middle of a ball game on a dusty road. One of the players is a friendly teenager with a plaster on his knee, and his name is Aladdin.<\/p>\n
Jonah wants a flying carpet straight away. Abby has to tell him the old story hasn’t got one. It has two genies and an evil magician instead.<\/p>\n
Then Abby joins in the game and hits Aladdin smack on the nose. Off he goes for an ice pack, just as the magician arrives looking for someone to fetch his lamp.<\/p>\n
So Abby and Jonah go to the cave instead.<\/p>\n
They have to cross three rooms without touching anything OR ELSE, and one is full of floating stars that burn. The magician isn’t nearly as frightening. He hands out granola bars and won’t go underground because he hates small spaces.<\/p>\n
The genie turns out to be a grumpy little old man in beige pyjamas. By now Abby can’t stop yawning (all that late-night reading). She makes her wish and gets ONE word wrong. I won’t tell you which.<\/p>\n
Abby and Jonah do walk off with a man they know is a villain, and they eat his snacks. Jonah is the one who brings up stranger danger, so it’s a handy thing to talk about afterwards.<\/p>\n
Abby lists eight earlier trips in chapter one, but everything about the mirror is explained again. If your reader would rather begin where she did, Fairest of All is the first book. Abby has just moved house, she’s cross about everything, and Jonah wakes her to say the mirror is hissing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sarah Mlynowski’s Genie in a Bottle is the ninth Whatever After book, a funny fairy tale adventure for 8 year olds where one very tired girl gets one word of her wish wrong. Abby’s school is holding a read-a-thon. Whoever raises the most money gets to help choose new books for the library. She’s read […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14218,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":14202,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Fairest of All","lr_seo_hook":"A read-a-thon she can't win, a cave of burning stars and a grumpy genie.","lr_series_id":111,"lr_series_name":"Whatever After","lr_series_position":9,"lr_series_label":"","lr_author_order":""},"book_tag":[27],"age_group":[26],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[890],"class_list":["post-14219","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-fantasy-books","age_group-books-for-8-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-sarah-mlynowski"],"yoast_title":"Whatever After 9 – Genie in a Bottle by Sarah Mlynowski | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A read-a-thon she can't win, a cave of burning stars and a grumpy genie. For ages 8+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n