So, over spring break, I had lots of time to read books and I discovered my two new favorites.
Summary: "Jo Larouche has lived her thirteen years in the California desert with her Aunt Lily, a faded Hollywood starlet, ever since she found in Lily’s laundry room with this note pinned to her blankets:
This is Jo. Please take care of her.
But beware.
This is a DANGEROUS baby.Up until this point, Jo has been, as Aunt Lily puts it, “as dangerous as a glass of milk.” But all that’s about to change. At Lily’s annual Christmas costume party, several strange things happen: a boy in a hedgehog shoots an elderly Russian colonel; a talking cockroach is found tied up in the basement, moaning about how this will play in the tabloid press; and a box falls from the sky, addressed to Jo from “The Order of Odd-Fish.”
Soon, worsening circumstances lead Jo and Lily out of California forever–and into the mysterious, strange, fantastical world of Eldritch City. There, Jo learns the scandalous truth about who she is, and she and Lily join the Order of Odd-Fish, a colorful collection of knights who research useless information. Glamorous cockroach butlers, impossible quests, obsolete weapons and bizarre festivals fill their days, but two villains–one quite pointless, and one more demonic than you can possibly imagine–are controlling their fate. Jo is inching closer and closer to the day when her destiny is fulfilled, and no one in Eldritch City will ever be the same."
Summary: "Neef is a changeling, a human baby stolen by fairies and replaced with one of their own. She lives in "New York Between," a Manhattan that exists invisibly, side by side with our own, home to fairies, demons, mermaids, and other creatures of folklore. Neef is protected by her fairy godmother, Astris (a very lovely white rat) until she breaks a Fairy Law. Now, unless she can meet the challenge of the Green Lady of Central Park, she'll be sacrificed to the Wild Hunt. Neef is a native New Yorker, and she's determined to beat the rap-- but New York Between is a maze of magic and magical rules, and time is running out...."
So, my dad has told me on several accounts that we (him and I) have Gypsy blood, also known as Black Dutch (German Gypsy). I find it all rather interesting, because all the stereotypes about Gypsies fit my father and I.
