Once Upon a Wickedness
Aug 2023 · Sold by Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited
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About this ebook
What happens when a group of school children, led by the resourceful ten-year-old Dance Violet, dare to ask those in power some hard questions? Find out in this magical novel by the bestselling Fleur Beale, stunningly illustrated by Lily Uivel. Ten-year-old orphan Dance Violet might have had a short and troubled history, but it hasn’t dampened her warrior spirit – not in the slightest. And that’s a good thing, because something is rotten in her village, and no one else has the courage to try put things right. People who ask questions disappear overnight and the village children are left to fend for themselves under the tyrannical schoolteachers Murk and Misselthwaite. There are whispers that a beautiful but wicked woman, ‘the golden-haired hellion’, appeared at a wedding ten years ago and was the start of all the trouble. Dance has some gifts that she’s only just beginning to discover, and while she knows it’s dangerous to ask questions, she is determined to find this golden-haired hellion – even if it means getting Disappeared. And when Dance finds her, the golden-haired hellion had better look out. Read all Fleur Beale's bestselling novels!
What happens when a group of school children, led by the resourceful ten-year-old Dance Violet, dare to ask those in power some hard questions? Find out in this magical novel by the bestselling Fleur Beale, stunningly illustrated by Lily Uivel. Ten-year-old orphan Dance Violet might have had a sh...
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About the author
Fleur Beale (Author)
Fleur Beale is the author of many award-winning books for children and young adults — she has now had more than 40 books published in New Zealand, as well as being published in the United States and England. Beale is the only writer to have twice won the Storylines Gaelyn Gordon Award for a Much-Loved Book:with Slide the Corner in2007, and I Am Not Esther in 2009. She won the Esther Glen Award for distinguished contribution to children’s literature for Juno of Taris in the 2009 LIANZA Children’s Book Awards. Fierce September won the YA category in the 2011 NZ Post Children’s Book Awards and the LIANZA Young Adult Award in 2011. In 2012 she won the Margaret Mahy Medal for her outstanding contribution to children’s writing. In 1999, Beale was Dunedin College of Education’s Writer in Residence. A former high-school teacher, Beale lives in Wellington. One of Beale’s most well-known books is I Am Not Esther, the story of a girl who is sent to live with relatives who are members of a strict religious cult. It’s a gripping psychological thriller that won an Honour Award in the 1990 New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards and features in the latest volume of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up, produced by UK publisher Quintessence. It was reissued in 2012 and has been in print since first published. Magpies identified it as a novel that ‘will have relevance wherever there are attempts to control the minds and emotions of children’. The bulk of Beale’s writing is set in the contemporary world. Topics range from boys who fix up an old car to bash around a paddock with, a girl who must take over her father’s business until he’s well enough to take back the reins, to a story about a 15-year-old boy who is a top kart racer. The New Zealand Listener has called Beale ‘one of the most consistently accomplished and versatile writers for teenagers in the country’. A ‘strong storyteller’ (Trevor Agnew, The Press) who is ‘consistently engaging’ (Frances Grant, Weekend Herald), Beale is a popular participant in the Writers in School programme, testifying that she is ‘in touch with the modern young market’ (Northern Advocate). Her entry in The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature noted that her characters are ‘intensely aware of their difficulties, social troubles and shortcomings’, and in so doing she exhibits ‘her understanding of teenagers, male and female, and ability to motivate even reluctant readers’. Acclaimed as ‘a riveting futuristic story’, in the National Library’s Services to Schools review,Juno of Tarris was likened to Bernard Beckett’s Genesis and the ‘classic’ The Giver by Lois Lowry. The reviewer concluded: ‘it is a brilliant story that completely enthralled me’. The sequel, Fierce September, was named one of The New Zealand Listener’s ‘50 Best Children’s Books of 2010’, and North and South praised its narrative for its ‘compelling authenticity’, while the Otago Daily Times wrote: ‘The writing is tight; the characterisation credible, and the narrative exciting.’ The book’s innovative technique of opening each chapter with a blog commentary on events was widely acclaimed, the reviewer in Magpies commenting that the ‘cross-media technique of combining online blogs with traditional text . . . brings the book vividly into our world’. Reviewing The Heart of Danger, the concluding volume in the Juno trilogy, in New Zealand Books, Angelina Sbroma identified Juno as a ‘protagonist of wish-fulfilment fantasy in the grand tradition’, but for all that is still a ‘rounded character’. The book left Bob Docherty requesting a fourth volume.
Lily Uivel (Illustrator)
After receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts, Lily found herself doing lots of odd jobs. But since before she can remember, she loved telling stories more than anything else. She would spend all of her spare time sketching and studying illustration. When Lily and her partner Rory left their life in London and came home to New Zealand, Lily decided to give freelance illustration a chance. She is now the illustrator of many children’s books, and the author of Big Bang Bread, the first picture book which she has both written and illustrated. Lily lives in Eastbourne with her assistant, She-Ra the dog, Rory and their little boy Reed.
Fleur Beale is the author of many award-winning books for children and young adults — she has now had more than 40 books published in New Zealand, as well as being published in the United States and England. Beale is the only writer to have twice won the Storylines Gaelyn Gordon Award for a Much-Loved Book:with Slide the Corner in2007, and I Am Not Esther in 2009. She won the Esther Glen Award for distinguished contribution to children’s literature for Juno of Taris in the 2009 LIANZA Children’s Book Awards. Fierce September won the YA category in the 2011 NZ Post Children’s Book Awards and the LIANZA Young Adult Award in 2011. In 2012 she won the Margaret Mahy Medal for her outstanding contribution to children’s writing. In 1999, Beale was Dunedin College of Education’s Writer in Residence. A former high-school teacher, Beale lives in Wellington. One of Beale’s most well-known books is I Am Not Esther, the story of a girl who is sent to live with relatives who are members of a strict religious cult. It’s a gripping psychological thriller that won an Honour Award in the 1990 New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards and features in the latest volume of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up, produced by UK publisher Quintessence. It was reissued in 2012 and has been in print since first published. Magpies identified it as a novel that ‘will have relevance wherever there are attempts to control the minds and emotions of children’. The bulk of Beale’s writing is set in the contemporary world. Topics range from boys who fix up an old car to bash around a paddock with, a girl who must take over her father’s business until he’s well enough to take back the reins, to a story about a 15-year-old boy who is a top kart racer. The New Zealand Listener has called Beale ‘one of the most consistently accomplished and versatile writers for teenagers in the country’. A ‘strong storyteller’ (Trevor Agnew, The Press) who is ‘consistently engaging’ (Frances Grant, Weekend Herald), Beale is a popular participant in the Writers in School programme, testifying that she is ‘in touch with the modern young market’ (Northern Advocate). Her entry in The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature noted that her characters are ‘intensely aware of their difficulties, social troubles and shortcomings’, and in so doing she exhibits ‘her understanding of teenagers, male and female, and ability to motivate even reluctant readers’. Acclaimed as ‘a riveting futuristic story’, in the National Library’s Services to Schools review,Juno of Tarris was likened to Bernard Beckett’s Genesis and the ‘classic’ The Giver by Lois Lowry. The reviewer concluded: ‘it is a brilliant story that completely enthralled me’. The sequel, Fierce September, was named one of The New Zealand Listener’s ‘50 Best Children’s Books of 2010’, and North and South praised its narrative for its ‘compelling authenticity’, while the Otago Daily Times wrote: ‘The writing is tight; the characterisation credible, and the narrative exciting.’ The book’s innovative technique of opening each chapter with a blog commentary on events was widely acclaimed, the reviewer in Magpies commenting that the ‘cross-media technique of combining online blogs with traditional text . . . brings the book vividly into our world’. Reviewing The Heart of Danger, the concluding volume in the Juno trilogy, in New Zealand Books, Angelina Sbroma identified Juno as a ‘protagonist of wish-fulfilment fantasy in the grand tradition’, but for all that is still a ‘rounded character’. The book left Bob Docherty requesting a fourth volume.
Lily Uivel (Illustrator)
After receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts, Lily found herself doing lots of odd jobs. But since before she can remember, she loved telling stories more than anything else. She would spend all of her spare time sketching and studying illustration. When Lily and her partner Rory left their life in London and came home to New Zealand, Lily decided to give freelance illustration a chance. She is now the illustrator of many children’s books, and the author of Big Bang Bread, the first picture book which she has both written and illustrated. Lily lives in Eastbourne with her assistant, She-Ra the dog, Rory and their little boy Reed.
Fleur Beale (Author)
Fleur Beale is the author of many award-winning books for children and young adults — she has now had more than 40 books published in New Zealand, as well as being published in the United States and England. Beale is the only writer to have twice won the Storylines Gaelyn Go...
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