Middle Grade Monday: The School for Good and Evil by Shoman Chainani

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Middle Grade Monday is a weekly post where I’m gonna talk about one MG book every monday. If you love MG books as much as I do, feel free to participate to spread the love of middle-grade books. You just have to choose one book that you’ve read or the one in your TBR and tell us a little bit about the book, and don’t forget to link back to me!

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My choice for this week’s Middle Grade Monday is the book I adore so much years ago but I never continue reading the second book because I was reading the translated book. Not that I didn’t like reading translated book, they are fine, but I just feel more comfortable reading books in their original language so that I couldn’t miss a thing.

I finally had the chance to buy the english copy of the first book so I could re read it and start collecting the books, I think there are already 4 books in the series so I really need to catch up fast!

The first kidnappings happened two hundred years before. Some years it was two boys taken, some years two girls, sometimes one of each. But if at first the choices seemed random, soon the pattern became clear. One was always beautiful and good, the child every parent wanted as their own. The other was homely and odd, an outcast from birth. An opposing pair, plucked from youth and spirited away.

This year, best friends Sophie and Agatha are about to discover where all the lost children go: the fabled School for Good & Evil, where ordinary boys and girls are trained to be fairy tale heroes and villains. As the most beautiful girl in Gavaldon, Sophie has dreamed of being kidnapped into an enchanted world her whole life. With her pink dresses, glass slippers, and devotion to good deeds, she knows she’ll earn top marks at the School for Good and graduate a storybook princess. Meanwhile Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks, wicked pet cat, and dislike of nearly everyone, seems a natural fit for the School for Evil.

But when the two girls are swept into the Endless Woods, they find their fortunes reversed—Sophie’s dumped in the School for Evil to take Uglification, Death Curses, and Henchmen Training, while Agatha finds herself in the School For Good, thrust amongst handsome princes and fair maidens for classes in Princess Etiquette and Animal Communication.. But what if the mistake is actually the first clue to discovering who Sophie and Agatha really are…?

I read this book maybe three years ago but I still remember how I loved this book so much. This book has this unique plot where two ordinary kids (one good kid and one bad kid) will be swept away to a magic school to learn magic stuff, and they will graduate as a Prince/Princess or Wizard/Witch as characters for a ‘literal’ children fairytale! The story is getting interesting when Sophie, the supposed be a good kid, is dumped to the school of evil, while Agatha, the supposed to be a bad kid, is in the school for good.

The worldbuilding is like most stories with magic school, nothing new, but still so fun to read. I would never get tired of any kind of magic school! The characters are well written and three dimensional.

I might forget one or three things because I read this a long time ago, but I will re-read it as soon as my english copy arrived! In the meantime, please read the reviews at Goodreads and I’m sure you’ll be adding it to your TBR!