Cloaked

Cloaked by Alex Flinn, 2011 HarperTeen

     Johnny Marco repairs shoes in a hotel in South Beach, Florida. His family's shoe repair shop is struggling, so Johnny works his summer away helping his mother to make it through. Johnny's best friend Meg works in her family's coffee shop across the hall. When a princess from Aloria, a small country somewhere in Europe, stays at the hotel Johnny and the hotel's pool boy are entranced by the beautiful girl.
     One night Princess Victoriana stops by the Marco family shoe repair with a mission for Johnny: repair her favorite shoes, and deliver them personally. Johnny is excited as any seventeen-year-old boy would be, but when he returns the shoe the princess has a bigger task, and more complicated. He has trouble believing that Victoriana's brother has been turned into a frog and kidnapped by the local witch in Aloria, but when she offers Johnny marriage and financial security he is willing to go out on a limb for the crazy beauty.
     Until she presents him with magical tools, Johnny doesn't believe her brother could have been transformed, let alone transported from Europe to southern Florida. With a magical cloak and earphones that allow him to communicate with once-human animals, Johnny travels to the Florida Keys in search for the missing prince. There he discovers a talking fox named Todd who asks Johnny to complete a task before giving up the information.
     After helping Todd with his task, being kidnapped by the evil witch who transformed Victoriana's brother, being rescued by Meg, fighting giants, and being chased by a homicidal maniac on a motorbike, Johnny returns to Victoriana with her brother in tow. But his adventures didn't prepare him for not wanting to marry the princess.
     With traces of The Elves and the Shoemaker, The Frog Prince, and several other fairy tales Cloaked is a fast-paced story where the characters fall from one crisis into another. Readers of all ages will wonder: What will Johnny chose when his quest is over?

Beastly

Beastly by Alex Flinn, 2007 HarperTeen

     Kyle Kingston is your typical spoiled brat. He enjoys coveted good looks—blonde hair, blue eyes, chiseled body, and above average height—his father’s money, and the arrogance that goes along with his elevated social status. Kyle takes pleasure in tormenting his less popular classmates. When he pushes the new girl too far, she turns him into a beast.

     But not an animal like a lion or bear, or even some combination of animals; Kendra turns Kyle into a sasquatch-esque creature with hair all over his body, claws, and the roar of a wild animal. He is given two years to find a girl who can love him despite his appearance, and to seal the deal with a kiss.

     Kyle is stuck in his beauty-dependent mindset and unsure of how he could possibly beat this curse. But when his father abandons him with the maid, Kyle negotiates for a tutor and everything he could want to live his isolated life.

     After a year Kyle begins to change.

     He finds a passion for gardening, and—when a man breaks into his greenhouse—a new friend who might break the curse. Lindy hates Kyle at first—he kidnapped her from her home and her father and the school she fought so hard to get into—but after a while she begins to enjoy her new home.

     Like most “Beauty and the Beast” tales Kyle and Lindy find their happily ever after, though in a non-traditional way. Their story isn’t Disney’s version but neither is it the darker Grimm horror story: Kyle and Lindy are teens in the modern world, complete with an online support group and pressures they must fight daily in their relationship.

     Beastly focuses on building a relationship based on caring for another person despite appearances or ability, and showing that caring through actions and behaviors. Readers as young as middle school may enjoy the story.