The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1)

by Catherynne M. Valente

Nebraska does not grow many of the kinds of girls who ought to go to Fairyland.

Dry, brown places are prime real estate for children who want to escape them. It’s much harder to find wastrels in New York City to fly about on a Leopard. After all, they have the Metropolitan Museum to occupy them.

“I came for you, September. Just you. I wish you the best that can be hoped for, and no worse than can be expected.”

The sun hitched up her trousers and soldiered on up into the sky.

I cannot help that readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.

“Temperament, you’ll find, is highly dependent on time of day, weather, frequency of naps, and whether one has had enough to eat.

Shifts were the suns and moons of her old world, dividing everything into times when her mother was there and when she was not.