Black, Holly. Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie. New York: Simon Pulse, 2005. Print.
Annotation:
After finding her boyfriend and her mother making out Val flees to New York City where she discovers a strange new world, totally alien from her life in New Jersey, and discovers that there is more to the world than meets the eye. Along the way Val learns some new things about herself as she tries to figure out what has happened to her and what is happening to her.
Justification for Nomination:
Valiant is a hard book to place in just one simple genre. It tackles issues of betrayal, running away, homelessness, and addiction, as well as the idea that the Faerie do exist and live among us. Valiant’s main character Val is a normal unsure-of-herself teen who flees to New York. So far the novel reads like a problem novel and seems very realistic. As she meets up with some other teens the novel takes a twist into the fantasy genre. All the time it retains its realistic settings and problems. Val begins to take Never which is a drug that allows humans to temporarily obtain Faerie powers. If you remove the Faerie powers Val is really just addicted to a drug. The beauty of Valiant as a YA novel is that it weaves so effortlessly the real and the fantasy. When you boil away all the fantasy there remains the story of a young girl who runs away and discovers that she does indeed have the internal strength to make it in the world. I would suggest this book for the Printz award because it covers some weighty issues that teens will identify with while being edgy enough to incorporate the fantasy element of the Faerie. Valiant should be nominated but it could come in under several categories and place well in all of them. Holly Black has the gift of dialog; her characters sound like teens and react with appropriate speeches and utterances. YA reader who read Valiant will identify and relate to her characters because of this.
Genre:
Problem, Realistic, Edgy, Fantasy, Coming of Age
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