about the book
It is the end of the Roaring Twenties and the beginning of the Great Depression. In Manhattan everything is blanketed in snow, and it is magical. On the side walk, hardened Police Detective Prince stares into a Macy’s window. There, in a room-sized coffin, a girl lies poised in sleep, appearing dead. No one can account for her condition, except the boy keeping watch across the street. She is Samantha Snow. With skin as white as snow and hair as dark as ebony, her mother called her Snow White.
Falling back through time, we learn that Snow’s mother has been taken by tuberculosis. Her father, a shrewd businessman called the “King of Wall Street,” has comes through the Crash unscathed. Lonely and hurting, he is bewitched by a sexy showgirl, the Queen of Ziegfeld’s Follies…and he quickly marries her. Though the dancer is beautiful, she has a cold heart. She loves her husband’s wealth but doesn’t appreciate the young daughter that comes with it. Snow is sent far off to a boarding school.
A decade later, Snow returns to New York after her father’s mysterious death only to find she is not welcomed by her evil stepmother. Instead of a mirror advising her, this stepmother receives insidious messages interspersed with stock quotes from a glass-domed ticker tape machine.
Learning that Snow inherits the majority of the estate, blinded by rage and consumed with jealousy, the cruel stepmother hires Mr. Hunt, a stone-faced stagehand, to kill the girl.
He is unable to do the nasty deed, and Snow runs off terrified though Central Park into a ramshackle Hooverville camp. Among the homeless and destitute, Snow finds protectors and help from a ragtag group of lost, angry, and abandoned street-tough boys, who answer to the name “The Seven.”
This is neither your normal Grimm’s fairy tale nor your sweet Disney version. But be warned, reader, there will be some stage make-up, a syringe, an apple, and an ending so sweet you’ll never see it coming!
about the author/illustrator
Born and raised in the Philadelphia area in Pennsylvania, Matt Phelan had his heart set on writing and directing films. After studying film in college, he wrote his first screenplay and was thrilled when it was optioned. When he learned that it would never be made into a movie, he turned back to his first love—drawing!
Matt spent the next three years developing a portfolio, intent on finding a career in book illustration. Matt attended a portfolio review at a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) conference, and an art director became intrigued with an image in his portfolio. This meeting led to his first book deal.
Matt is the illustrator of many books for young readers, including Marilyn’s Monster by Michelle Knudsen, Flora’s Very Windy Day by Jeanne Birdsall, and The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, winner of the Newbery Medal. He is the author-illustrator of Druthers and three graphic novels The Storm in the Barn, Around the World, and Bluffton. Matt has been nominated for five Will Eisner Awards!
Matt had been thinking about twisting the classic Snow White tale for more than ten years. One day he made the connection between the apple peddlers on the street of New York during the Great Depression and the evil stepmother in Snow White. He began asking himself questions. Who was the Queen? Who were the Dwarfs? Once he identified the dwarfs as street urchins, the story line blossomed. It took him only a month to write the story and another three years to draw the illustrations!
Matt lives in Ardmore, Philadelphia, with his family. He draws on an antique desk in his third-floor attic studio. Some interesting things to know about Matt: he has no middle name and he plays the ukulele while he waits for paint to dry!
Sources:
Author/Illustrator website
Author/Illustrator interview: Writing and Ruminating
Author/Illustrator interview: Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Author/Illustrator interview: TeenReads
Book trailer: Snow White : A Graphic Novel
Also by Matt Phelan:
Bluffton : My Summer with Buster. Candlewick Press. 2013.
Around the World : Three Remarkable Journeys. Candlewick Press. 2011.
The Storm in the Barn. Candlewick Press. 2009.
read more!
Bluffton : My Summer with Buster by Matt Phelan
Summer 1908, just outside of Muskegon, Michigan. A traveling troupe of vaudeville performers sets up camp, which means young Henry has several months to see the animals, shows, and even hang out with a slapstick actor his own age, named Buster Keaton! However, Buster is tired of performing. He just wants to be a normal boy and play ball with Henry and his friends.
Monster on the Hill by Rob Harrell
In a world where every town has a monster and attacks are actually cheered by tourists, Stoker-on-Avon is embarrassed by its resident monster, Rayburn. He hasn’t attacked in almost two years! When a local doctor and his young companion resolve to lift Rayburn out of his funk, they find the task made all the more urgent when a truly deadly monster decides to take over the town.