The Freedom Maze

Big Mouth House / Small Beer Press, 2011 (hardcover)

Reviews:

“It's 1960, but on the decayed Fairchild sugar plantation in rural Louisiana, vestiges of a grimmer past remain—the old cottage, overgrown garden maze, relations between white and black races.
    Stuck for the summer in the family ancestral home under the thumb of her cranky, imperious grandmother, Sophie, 13, makes a reckless wish that lands her in 1860, enslaved—by her own ancestors. Sophie's fair skin and marked resemblance to the Fairchilds earn her “easy” employment in the big house and the resentment of her peers, whose loyalty she'll need to survive. Plantation life for whites and blacks unfolds in compelling, often excruciating detail. A departure from Sherman's light fantasy Changeling (2006), this is a powerfully unsettling, intertextual take on historical time-travel fantasy, especially Edward Eager's Time Garden (1958), in which white children help a grateful enslaved family to freedom. Sophie's problems aren't that easily resolved: While acknowledging their shared kinship, her white ancestors refuse to see her as equally human. The framing of Sophie's adventures within 1960 social realities prompts readers to consider what has changed since 1860, what has not—for Sophie and for readers half a century later—and at what cost.
    Multilayered, compassionate and thought-provoking, a timely read on the sesquicentennial of America's Civil War.”
—Kirkus Reviews (*starred review*)

Download the first chapter. [PDF link]

The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen

Viking/Penguin, June 25, 2009 (hardcover)

Description:

Neef, the official Changeling of Central Park, has gone on a life-threatening quest and faced down a dragon, but that looks like a piece of cake compared to her first day at school. At Miss Van Loon’s School for Mortal Changelings—and that’s pronounced “Van Lo-en’s,” if you please—she meets her counterparts from all over Manhattan, learns the basics of diplomacy and simple magic, and memorizes what seems like an endless list of rules. She also makes an enemy: Tiffany of the Upper East Side, queen bee of the school.

But all that pales when Central park and all of Manhattan’s green places are threatened. If New York Harbor’s Mermaid Queen doesn't get her magic mirror back, she's going to turn the city's fresh water to salt… and everything and everyone Neef knows will die.

It’s up to Neef to save the day. Again. And this time, she has changeling friends.

Reviews:

Will be here soon.

Changeling

Viking Juvenile, 2006 (hardcover); Firebird, 2008 (paperback)

Description:

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 Folk lore. Neef has always been 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 bloodthirsty 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…

Reviews:

From School Library Journal
“Grade 5–8—Sherman’s tongue is firmly and delightfully in cheek in this contemporary fantasy that blends children’s literature and pop culture in an effervescent witch’s brew with a strong scent of edgy attitude… The novel is delightfully full of allusions to children’s books (the Water Rat and Stuart Little live in Central Park), fairy-tale motifs, and contemporary culture (the Green Lady talks as tough as a character on The Sopranos). Readers will love the feisty, irrepressibly optimistic Neef, delight in the sheer cleverness of the story, and never look at New York in the same way again.”
—Connie Tyrrell Burns, © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

“Do[es] for Central Park what Peter Pan did for Kensington Gardens.”
—The Washington Post

“Delightful, witty, and magical, Changeling shows us New York as we secretly believe it is.”
—Holly Black, author of The Spiderwick Chronicles

“I love it: contemporary fantasy with plenty of urban hipness and a girl hero who thinks on her feet!”
—Tamora Pierce

“There’s so much to love about this book—Sherman’s incorporation of the contemporary with the timeless is both seamless and endlessly amusing.”
—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing, and author of Little Brother

Stories in Anthologies

Troll’s Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales, ed. Datlow & Windling, Viking, 2009, “The Wizard’s Apprentice.”

Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, ed. Datlow & Windling, Viking Penguin, 2006, “The Fiddler of Bayou Teche.”

The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm, ed. Datlow & Windling, Viking Penguin 2004; The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens, ed. Jane Yolen and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Tor, 2005, “CATNYP.”

Firebirds: An Anthology of Original Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Sharyn November, Viking Penguin, 2003, “Cotillion.”

The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest , ed. Datlow & Windling, Viking Penguin, 2001, “Grand Central Park.”

A Wolf at the Door and Other Retold Fairy Tales, ed. Datlow & Windling, Simon & Schuster, 2000, “The Twelve Months of New York City.”