Laurel Snyder

I’m deeply honored to be unveiling the following excerpt and interior art from BREADCRUMBS, the truly fantastic/lovely/compelling/heartbreaking new book by the wonderful Anne Ursu.

I was sent a review copy of the book, and immediately began gushing about it on Goodreads, so Anne’s publicist offered to let me have a sneak peek of the art that wasn’t included in the ARC, to share with all of you lucky people.

The book is a retelling of the Snow Queen, but it’s also a contemporary novel, about friendship and family, adoption and divorce, parents and kids.  Anne’s writing is so clear, so poetic, I’m not going to set up this excerpt.  I don’t think I need to.  It’s a rare book that works at line-level, and is so compelling as language, one can’t help wanting to read it.

So here you go, an excerpt from BREADCRUMBS, the *other* purple-covered, magical divorce book for middle grade readers, with “Bread” in the title, that happens to be launching on September 27…

The universe is a weird and magical place, people.

GET THIS BOOK!

First the excerpt:

She could feel nothing at first but stillness. Her body did not know what to do with it. The tick tock of the clock was gone, and Hazel missed it like her own heartbeat.

Hazel shuddered as the wind danced around her gently, as if this was all there had ever been between them. She wiped the snow from her eyes, and it fell agreeably away. And she looked up.

She was standing in the middle of a vast plain in the snow-shimmer night. All around her was still. There was an eternity of sky above her. There was no sign of anything else—the woods, the hills, the storm. The horizon stretched on around her.

But she was not alone. There was a palace just ahead, sitting in the middle of the plain like a gift. It was simple— a small square with a dome framed by four minarets. It looked like it had been sculpted out of snow.

Hazel stared at the palace. It was not the same. It was longer and a little more elegant and more feminine. But it reminded her of the fortress in Jack’s sketchbook, of the place where no one could ever find him. It was like this plain had birthed it, just for Jack, and now it presided proudly over this kingdom of nothing.

The glimmering palace tugged at her, and Hazel gave herself to it, even though she was nothing. She was a lamentable splotch, her black hair and brown skin and green shirt and blue jeans and purple backpack a speck in this eternal whiteness.

WOW, right?

And then, a never-before-seen (by you) image, of Hazel at the Palace…

Tell me you don’t want to read this book….

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