#Middle Grade Fantasy

[greykolla-art]

I feel like I’m making people interested in reading Skulduggery Pleasant by just drawing cute scenes.

That’s false advertising, these books HURT me!

So here’s out of context and out of order angst scenes too!👏

[wizard-legs]

Another sun sprite/solar flairy!! Cannot get enough of these little fellas.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

I mean...this combination of depth and toilet humor is literally Shakespearean, so A+ for Eoin Colfer.

[queenunderthatmountain]

I am once again asking for Elwin not to be Sophies father

[winwin17]

Remember when Dex tweaked the hair serum to make Stina grow a beard? And then at school he made fun of her by saying, "Nice beard you got there. Hope you know how to shave."

Which means...

Elves know what beards are. They know what shaving is. Where are the bearded Elves, Shannon? Where are they?

[ekbelsher]

TALE OF THE FLYING FOREST comes out two weeks from today! Written by the incredibly talented R.M. Romero and published by Little, Brown Young Readers, this beautiful middle grade fairytale retelling is for anyone who ever wanted to escape into another world. This was my first-ever full book illustration deal (cover art plus 40 interior black-and-white illustrations) and I was honoured to be a part of it :)

[rosered-schneeweisschens-sis]

two protagonists.

one is a normal person who's a dorky social outcast, until they find a special magic object and, through hard work, learn to use it and become a Great Hero with Many Friends.

the other person is also a dorky social outcast, until they find out they are the Chosen One and automatically become The Coolest Person Ever.

[ettawritesnstudies]

Cecelia Teagan: A Runaways Character Introduction

Age: 12 years old Family life: She’s the younger daughter, and looks up to her older sister Hannah. The two of them live in an old farmhouse with their parents and a ton of pets. She believes the house is also full of many mythical creatures, which she talks to. These include a brownie named Hazel, who is a small, often invisible, elfin creature that cleans their rooms in exchange for food;…

[wizardteampod]

New #WizardTeam bonus episode dropped! This time we spoke with the author of the fun, fantasy-filled graphic novel DRAGONFORGED: SWORD OF THE CHAMPION, @ericlide. Listen here!

[ericlide]

Hello!! If you've been following me for any length of time you might remember that I've been busy working on my debut graphic novel! Today, I can announce the series title: DRAGONFORGED! And Book 1 is Sword of the Champion!

Above are pics from the Advance Reading Copy, which I received from my publisher over the weekend. (The final book will be in full color, but I thought it'd be fun to give you guys a lil taste.)

Dragonforged is set in the kingdom of Draeland, which fell to the evil Fiendlord 100 years before the main story. But the Goddess who watches over this realm has chosen a new hero to banish the darkness...

It's a story that harkens back to some of my favorite stuff growing up including games like The Legend of Zelda, Dragon Quest and old-school Final Fantasy, combined with my love of fight scenes and silly faces, lol.

I hope to share more in the coming months!!!!!!!!!!

[greykolla-art]

Just some doodles, as I continue to wait for my books. 🙏

I like this version of Tanith, but China could use more refining.

Not quite beautiful enough for my taste.🙏❤️

[wizard-legs]

Yesterday I woke up to hail so I drew this little fairy comic where they look forward to hail, to cope and romanticize the November gloom

[checkoutmybookshelf]

From Criminial Mastermind to Fairy Tale Hero: The End of Artemis Fowl

Here we are, everyone: The final Artemis Fowl book. It has been a journey revisiting the first series I was old enough to follow and fandom, and it's wild to me that we're finally at the end. Especially since I picked up the first Artemis Fowl book in late elementary school (I'm genuinely not sure when though, because the first book came out in April of 2001, when I was in fifth grade and it's very possible I didn't pick the book up until sixth grade, which would have put me at 11, same age as Artemis in that first book) and the final book came out in 2012, when I was in my junior year of undergrad. So at that point, Artemis, Holly, and Butler had been part of my life for a long time. And now here we are, to say goodbye to them again after this leisurely re-listen/read. Let's talk Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian.

Artemis grew and changed so much across eight books, which makes sense because holy cow do kids change a LOT between 11 and 15. We get so busy living life in those years that we don't really think about how much we truly learn and grown between prepubescence and full-on teenagerhood, but that is a time of massive change, and I think that more than anything else really justifies how Artemis goes from a chillingly vampiric child to a teenager with enough compassion and empathy to understand that sometimes the right choice is a heroic self-sacrifice for the people that your people (both humans and the people, in this case) love. Artemis also did a really interesting version of that thing so many teenagers do where they hit a point where they can't just phone in their abilities anymore and have to actually put effort in, but for Artemis it was emotional rather than intelligence. And yet even when making said heroic sacrifice, we have the absolutely beautiful callback to the end of book one, where Artemis drugs his mother, Butler, and Juliet to keep them from being harmed by the bio-bomb. To stop Holly from preventing him from stopping Opal, Artemis sedates her. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Except where best villain ever Opal Koboi is concerned. By this book, Opal is so disconnected from reality that she is willing to risk literally going nuclear to escape captivity, and then just...casually sparks off the apocalypse because if there is one thing our girl wants, it's to be Empress of the World, and if that means using spirit zombies and an ancient fairy doomsday device, then I guess it's a good thing she's already versed in black magic. Or something. Opal is fully and completely off the rails at this point, and if you catch yourself referring to yourself as "Mommy" in reference to the spirits of several scores of ancient elven berserkers who would--barring a geas--murder you for it, you might want to stop and take a long, hard look at your life choices. And maybe don't forget that you've cloned yourself, because that's the kind of little detail that can completely ruin your chances of being Empress of the World.

Holly quite possibly deserves every medal that exists for managing to drag Artemis's extremely out-of-shape butt through increasingly dangerous and high-stakes missions while navigating fairy politics and *checks notes* breaking up with her commanding officer after a disastrous date where they both got kicked out of a crunchball match. (And once again...HOW DARE Colfer leave this in exposition and not show us this amazing disaster of a date!?!?) Holly has also just been through the emotional wringer with Artemis and every time he decided to double-cross or lie by omission to bring off a plan and every time he does something infuriatingly human that drives up her blood pressure and yet makes the mission succeed. And then she has to sit there and watch him die to save humans and fairies. Seriously, the fact that Holly Short is a functional being rather than a hot mess is nothing short of a miracle.

And then we come to Butler. Long-suffering, super fucking over it, broken-hearted Domovoi Butler. Artemis got DAMN lucky that the whole "put my spirit in a clone of me" plan panned out, because if it hadn't, Holly was entirely correct: Butler would never have recovered. Butler and Opal might be my two favorite characters in the entire series at this point. That's not where I started--for a very long time, Holly was my favorite character, and Commander Root still gets an honorable mention--but as a grown-ass adult (I'm not doing that math for you, if you want to know that I'm old, you do the math), I cannot escape how dedicated, competent, kind, and just AWESOME Butler is. I feel like the vibe here is very similar to the thing that happens when you watch Sound of Music as a kid and either Maria or one of the kids is your favorite character, but when you come back to it as an adult, Captain Von Trapp is EVERYTHING (RIP Christopher Plummer, we loved you). Butler has a similar vibe but in a different genre.

So, I was an adult and had enough experience of watching fandoms to see the mixed reactions to this book being released. People were sad the series was ending, people were disappointed because the series had seemingly drifted, and people loved it. My reaction was pretty mixed, because I had a lot going on, I knew there were good things here but I was also kind of missing the heisty, criminal mastermind vibes, but also OPAL KOBOI. So I was pretty unsure how to feel about this book when it came out, and then I didn't reread it for literal years because I went to grad school.

Returning to this book now, I have suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch respect for how Colfer tied up the series and how he pulled off a new Irish mythological cycle, but updated for the twenty-first century. I have enough life on me to appreciate the changes Artemis goes through, and enough literature degrees to have a new and deeply fulfilling perspective on the series structure. Last Guardian is not my favorite book of the series--it's not even in the top three--but I think that what it does is genuinely impressive and I love how you can finish this book and go instantly back into the OG Artemis Fowl. The story does not, strictly speaking, have to end. And that is a vibe I can 100% get behind.

I deeply love the Artemis Fowl books, and I cannot recommend the series enough. They have so many strengths, are incredibly well-written, and they live rent-free in my head even now as an adult.

[queenunderthatmountain]

I am 100% sure Shannon originally planned for Fitz to be the only love interest. Keefe just suddenly popped up out of nowhere and she saw that he was the only real match for Sophie...

[winwin17]

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