Sophie Farrier -- a bright and imaginative teen girl -- was born with rotten luck. Misfortune has placed her in Seaside, a dull and dreary village filled with dull and dreary people. It is a place where creativity is frowned upon, outsiders are shunned, and no one dares to stand out. Those who actually muster up the courage to leave are never heard from again.
After a terrible storm, the sea casts ashore a mysterious, unconscious man who bears the gifts of magic. Seaside is thrown into an uproar, and in the resulting chaos, Sophie gets a glimpse of the dread secrets buried at home. Now she must set out on a journey to learn more about her family, her world, and herself.
Yet the road out of Seaside is fraught with peril. There is a keeper of secrets lying in Sophie's path, one whose ruined past is entwined wither her own. A master of deception, he seeks to destroy her very sense of self using the cruelest weapon of all -- the truth.
Sophie Farrier -- a bright and imaginative teen girl -- was born with rotten luck. Misfortune has placed her in Seaside, a dull and dreary village filled with dull and dreary people. It is a place where creativity is frowned upon, outsiders are shunned, and no one dares to stand out. Those who actually muster up the courage to leave are never heard from again.
After a terrible storm, the sea casts ashore a mysterious, unconscious man who bears the gifts of magic. Seaside is thrown into an uproar, and in the resulting chaos, Sophie gets a glimpse of the dread secrets buried at home. Now she must set out on a journey to learn more about her family, her world, and herself.
Yet the road out of Seaside is fraught with peril. There is a keeper of secrets lying in Sophie's path, one whose ruined past is entwined wither her own. A master of deception, he seeks to destroy her very sense of self using the cruelest weapon of all -- the truth.
The day after a storm is the best time to harvest kelp. Kelp farming, for the unaware, is the act of gathering dead kelp that has washed ashore, hauling it onto land, and drying it out for various industrial uses. Dead kelp, for the unaware, smells an awful lot like rotting sulfurous diarrhea and feels like the skin of a slug that has had its guts squeezed out. Successful kelp farmers, therefore, have a knack for looking on the bright side of things.Â
In the same way that a butterflyâs wing stirs the mighty hurricane into life, so it was that the bright side of a thing brought the winds of change to Seaside by blinding a moderately successful kelp farmer that day. His name was Mert.
Mert had just stooped over a particularly rich glom when a gleaming, golden flash caught his eye. He glanced up, looked around, and seeing nothing out of the ordinary, shrugged and dug his bare fingers into the moldering, mucousy mound at his feet. The flash came again, this time accompanied by the gentle shhh of an incoming wave. Ahhh said the wave, and the light stung Mertâs eyes for a third time. Frustrated and glad of the excuse to get his face away from the horrendous slime pile, he stood and stared at the shoreline.
Mert was motionless for a full minute, waiting for the momentary bursts of reflected sunlight. An internal struggle was taking place. Having been born and raised in Seaside, andâit must be saidâbeing of a somewhat simple nature, Mertâs powers of imagination were shamefully impotent. Heâd never seen anything so shiny on the beach before. It was clear he should investigate, but he simply couldnât imagine what the source could be. Surely, it couldnât be anything interesting enough to justify leaving his kelp behind. Or could it?
It was a real conundrum.
His inactivity caught the attention of his wife and fellow kelp farmer, Frances. âMert,â she said. ââChu doing?â
âUh?â
âI asked whatchu was doing.â
Mert pointed. âThereâs a thing.â
âA thing?â She put her hands on her hips and frowned. âWhat sort of thing?â
âDunno.â
âThen why you starinâ at it?â
Mertâs gnarled face contorted, contemplating. âWas thinking âbout going over there.â
âWell I donât much like the sound of that.â Frances came from a long line of proud, practical people who really knew how to keep their noses to the kelp. Mert, on the other hand, had a great-great-granduncle who had disappeared after wandering Out There. This marred family history had caused quite a lot of tension over the years. âWhy dâyou want to go and ruin our perfectly adequate day? Weâve got all these fresh gloms lyinâ about and a nice spot of sunshine to boot. What more could you want?â
Mert secretly harbored all sorts of wants. Long experience had taught him that this question was rhetorical in nature.
Shhh. Ahhh. Flicker-flash.
Itâs hard to explain why Mert did what he did next. It may have been the sunshine, or his ramblerâs roots, or the weight of all those hidden desires. Perhaps he was simply tired of being told what to do. Whatever the reason, Mert hitched up his britches and said, âIâm going over there.â And then he did.
The source of the glinting lay half-buried in a loose mat of kelp. It was a medallion, a thin, circular wafer of onyx surrounded by a rim of gold. Arcane symbols were engraved along its circumference. It bore an inlaid rosette formed from triangular gemstones, each point radiating outward from a pearl embedded in the center. An attached chain disappeared into the ropy, rotting glom. Leaning over to admire it, Mert was shocked.
No, really. As he reached out to touch the medallion, a tiny bolt of lightning leapt out and singed his fingertips. Instinctively, Mert shoved his insulted digits into his mouth, completely forgetting their sulfurous, slimy slug coating. He collapsed to the sand, retching. Moments later, an exasperated Frances stood over her husband, who was busy admiring the puddle of warm breakfast between his palms. Feeling that Mert had not been sufficiently punished for giving in to his curiosity, Frances said, âServes you right.âÂ
As if in agreement, the kelp groaned.
Mert and Frances had seen a lot during their time as kelp farmers, but not once had either of them encountered a glom that groaned. It was simply too much. âCome along,â said Frances, desperate to get Mert up and away from this new oddity, lest his curiosity take hold of him again. Frances had been haranguing him for decades; she knew what a slow learner he could be.
But it was too late. A fist pushed up to the surface with a thick, slopping noise. It held tight to the medallionâs chain. The glom groaned again, and Mertâs imagination leapt into overdrive. This time, however, he was untouched by indecision. For once, he knew exactly what to do. He began clearing the kelp off of the fistâs owner, and after a momentâs deliberation, Mert and Frances hauled out the unconscious stranger and began a trek that would end at the only place that made any sense.
Sophie Farrier is 14 years old and an orphan. She lives with her older brother Damon in a barn loft, courtesy of their Aunt Elle, who took the siblings in after the death of their parents. In their island village of Seaside, the citizens embrace norms that encourage blandness and uniformity among its residents and their lives, firmly discouraging creativity and individual self-expression.
Village life is dull and unexciting to Sophie. Her favorite pastime, other than daydreaming, is reading classic fairy tales, which she labels âCHILDISH NONSENSEâ, because they all end the same. She yearns for a different ending: something new and unexpected..
Sophieâs wish comes true when a storm washes an unconscious stranger onto Seasideâs shore, interfering with the unremarkable lives of the villageâs inhabitants. He eventually wakes up and leaves the village, heading for the city of Fairport, looking for a ship so that he can return to the sea. Around the same time, Sophie discovers a room in the barn filled with a plethora of household goods, clothing, and watercolor paintings whose colors are far beyond Seasideâs âperfectly adequateâ limitations. An argument creates a rift between Sophie and Damon when he reveals the origins of these items. Feeling betrayed that Damon kept her unremembered childhood and family's past secret from her, Sophie sets off on her own, in search of the Navigator and her own destiny.
On her adventurous journey, Sophie crosses paths with a colorful cast of characters that help her along her way down the Queen's Road, into Fairport, and through Granelith's Weald, which is rumored to be teeming with magical creatures. She finally gets to witness an act of true magic when she is saved from a lethal predator, but this delivers her into the hands of a villain who desires to exact revenge upon her for a forgotten childhood incident. While fighting for her life, Sophie discovers the answers about her parents â and something completely unexpected about herself.
A great fantasy adventure tale that holds its own with many of our favorite classics, The Glass Frog comes to a satisfying conclusion. Fans of tales like The Wizard of Oz and The Princess Bride are sure to enjoy The Glass Frog.Â