A Tale of Two Castles by Gail Carson Levine

This is one of GCL's newer young adult books. Following in the footsteps of her other popular ones like Ella Enchanted and The Two Princesses of Bamarre, A Tale of Two Castles recounts the adventures of Elodie, a 12-year-old girl who travels from her rural island to the big city with hopes of becoming an apprentice to an acting troupe.

Of course, she's coming into this whole new world, naive and unprepared. The actors reject her--not for lack of talent, but because she can't pay them to teach her--so she finds apprenticeship in an unlikely place, as an assistant to a dragon! "IT" (because dragons are the only ones who know their gender--there's a lesson in there that most kids probably aren't picking up on), Masteress Meenore, is a bit of a logician, using inductive and deductive reasoning to come to sound conclusions. She endeavors to teach Elodie to think more like her and loans her out to the local ogre to keep him from danger. Cute, childish adventures ensue.

My biggest complaint with this book is that the characters are caricatures of themselves. The cryptic, Type A dragon is super cryptic and obsessive compulsive. The greedy king is super greedy. Inquisitive Elodie can't help but question everything. The ditzy princess is super ditzy…

But if you have to read a GCL book, this is definitely one of the good ones. The start may be a bit slow, but once Elodie finds her niche, fun mysteries ensue and they're just uncomplicated enough that you can try to use your own inductive and deductive reasoning skills to solve them first!

~7/10~