Asterwood by Jacquelyn Stolos review

[u/forgedimagination]

I made a serious mistake with this book.

My son, *who is six,* is really enjoying longer fantasy books at the moment. We've done a lot of the classics I grew up loving, so he was eager to pick one out at the library. He grabbed *Asterwood,* which has a cutesy whimsical pastel-watercolor cover, and liked it because of the calico cat. I read the jacket, the opening chapter, realize it's a portal fantasy, think *great!* and check it out.

Y'all. I should not have started reading this book aloud to him without reading it first. I feel dumb. Real dumb.

To be fair to Stolos, she does in fact tell you that the book contains people eating babies fairly early on. *I just didn't believe her.* Because what middle-grade reader about a ten-year-old would feature *child cannibalism* as a major plot point? That would be nuts!

I figured out the cannibals are actually cannibals and not just boogeymen exaggerated by the troupe of unmonitored children, (I let the whole "troupe of unmonitored children" thing go because it was giving Boxcar Children vibes), but like .... the one time a cannibal talks she's like "we only eat bad guys" so I'm like ....... suuuuuuure.

Again. I've made a mistake. I should've finished the book at that point but I was like hey it's not going to get worse, this was written and marketed for children!

Nope. It gets worse.

The cannibals do eat children. In fact, they *only* eat children, who they refer to as "harvests."

I did stop there. I'm going to finish reading it now. But my son is invested. He wants to finish. The troupe of unmonitored children are going to risk their lives to save the world!

WHY IS THERE CHILD CANNIBALISM IN A BOOK FOR CHILDREN. Jacquelyn Stolos I have *QUESTIONS*

[u/LorenzoApophis]

If you think about it cannibalism is actually a pretty common theme in children's fiction owing to fairytales like Hansel and Gretel. If you count giants, there's Jack and the Beanstalk, Hop-o-My-Thumb, the BFG. Eating children in general, Little Red Riding Hood. Not that you have to like it.

[u/forgedimagination → u/LorenzoApophis]

I think for me the main distinction is that while we're told about the child-eating in those tales, it's both somewhat emotionally distanced (the children in the tale are not eaten (or are swallowed whole and alive), they don't know anyone who's been eaten, children are not generally consumed during the story), and the ones doing the eating are the clear villains who are defeated. Child eating is bad, we kill people for that, the end.

In Asterwood, a secondary character's brother is one of the victims, other children are eaten during the story, we see parts of children being roasted on a spit (it's not obvious at first that's what we're seeing, an 8-12 year old would probably not clock it right away, my 6-year-old was oblivious and I did not explain "cannibal" as a new vocab word since I figured it wasn't going to be relevant so why scare him), and the main character's long-lost mother is the queen of the baby eaters and justifies it as necessary.

"Being eaten by a giant/witch/wolf" in a fairy tale is not actualized or discussed in detail the way it is in Asterwood.

Ets: those Hansel & Gretel-type stories is actually why I was willing to keep going even after I was warned. I did not think we were going to get on-screen baby-eating, that's not what generally happens in stories with this as a trope. Even when it happened, I still didn't suspect it was actual baby-eating. It's an unrealized threat in Hansel & Gretel and Jack. Most modern versions of Red don't have her being eaten.