I really wanted to LOVE this book but instead, I just liked it. :( From the time I turned 5 and began reading the Wizard of Oz series (Yes, I taught myself to read at the age of 3 using my brother's comic books and my reading level has always been exceedingly high!), I have loved mystical fantasy. This book had it all or so I thought.

The beginning of the book was good but then I began to realize that the fairy kingdom was as arrogant as the humans in the real world. The story got a little confusing when Neef discovered her "double" who came from the human world and that it was never truly explained whether Neef was the stolen child or if Changeling was the stolen child.

Now I will admit that I would probably have LOVED this book if I had read it in my youth. However, at the age of 64 and having seen a bit more of life than I would have liked, I found the book to be not quite so enchanting. (I did just retead the entire Wizard of Oz Series and was enthralled, so it isn't the fact that my love of fantasy has deserted me). I just didn't feel a kinship with any of the characters. In fact, Neef and Changeling were rather boring. The fact that they were pretty much the only 2 characters that got any action could have been part of the problem for me.

A child would enjoy reading this book or having it read to her/him, I'm sure. But even if you're bored like I was, I would tell you not to read this book and instead give it to someone of the age it was written for.

This was an easy read but still good.

This is a fun kids' book. The main character is very confident throughout the book and there's a lot of fun folklore involved.

A well handled quest. I'm glad to hear it went so smoothly. A lot of people get sick or even die on quests. It was comforting to know she had a fairy godmother looking out for her.

I absoulutley loved this book. It was fantasy so there were mermaids,demons and the main character boy was she a handful. so if your done with your book pick this one up i garuntee you will love it.

Changling revolves around Neef, a stolen human child being raised in the fairy world. There are rules in Faerie, but Neef has yet to discover that that rulebreaking can have serious consequences (though consequences can be gotten around if you are clever). Featuring characters such as the Pooka, Mr. Rat, Puck, moss women, and mermaids, this fun story for younger readers also serves as an introduction to fantasy characters from all over the world.

CHANGELING is the kind of fairy tale I love :D Set in the modern day, with a bold young girl names Neff who is trying to survive the fairy realm's elaborate rules. Neef is a Changeling, stolen to be raised by fairies, with a fairy left in her place. Living in Central Park and closely watched by her fairy family, all Neef wants--like any smart kid--is freedom, but in the fairy world, freedom can be deadly. Neef has to use her wits when she breaks the Rules. If she doesn't succeed on a small quest, the Wild Hunt will have her, and she will die. The story is a tense and scary one, the characters wonderful. I love Delia Sherman's adult books, and I am delighted with this one as well the next one in this series comes out in June 2009 I will be keeping my eye out for it as I am excited to see how this Fairy Tale continues!!! ;.D

I am, personally, not very fond of urban fantasy as such, especially in this particular kind of setting. The stories of an Other City (in this case, New York), created in the likeness of the human one and populated by fairy versions of the actual inhabitants (here: artistic types in the Village, vampiric fairy entertainers in Broadway and gold-hungry dragons, the magical Bear-Bull and a woman named DowJones in the Wall Street, to name only a few) very, very rarely seem convincing to me, because they are too obvious, too predictable (which is why I loved Ben Aaronowitch's concept of making Mama Thames a black woman: he chose a less predictable and yet, in modern multicultural London, perfectly fitting personification for London's main river). To be completely fair, however: I do know the book and the concepts are designed... well, not exactly for me: I am neither young adult, not New Yorker in love with her strange city.
It was not the setting, then, that made me like (really, seriously like) Delia Sherman's novel. What got me hooked and kept me reading was, firstly, the creation of characters, and secondly, the story as such.
Sherman had a fantastic idea in creating her protagonists. The narrator is Neef, a teenage human girl who has been snatched from our world to the fairy NYC and exchanged for a fairy changeling. Neef is mortal and human, she does not perfectly fit the fairy world, but this is her home and they are her people, the only ones she knows. She, predictably, gets herself into trouble, predictably and very consciously (because, hell, she knows the fairy rules!) goes on a quest and there she meets her predicably present magical companion.
Who turns out to be the fairy changeling left to her parents in her place.
She is, from what we may see, a partially disabled young teenager (all signs point at her being seriously autistic), living with her loving, caring family in the modern NYC. Sherman's use of the old bit of folklore (the common belief that changelings are difficult children) to create an unusual, intriguing character. Jennifer, nicknamed Changeling by Neef, is seen by the readers only through Neef's eyes; she does not get to be the ppoint of view. But the combination of what Neef says and what a modern reader can infer from Changeling's comments, makes for a flawed, problematic, yet very humane and likeable character of a disabled girl who has to at least partially overcome her problems to survive; which, one may add, does not make her overcome them forever (she's still prone to panic attacks and she hates to be touched) and be magically made perfect; such little touches of realism are one of the book's strongers points.
Both Changeling and Neef are slightly alien to the worlds they live in (a feeling, as I recall, shared by the vast percentage of teenagers of this world, fairy or not), but Sherman does not give us a wish-fulfillment fantasy in which the fairy will return to the fairies and the human girl to the humans. Neef's world is the fairy one, while Changeling, despite her origins, feels at home with humans - that is as it should be and this is the solution the characters are aiming for. Neither will there be a happy ending with undying friendship and friendly visits to the other's world, I'm afraid...
The novel is beautifilly constructed, with a fairytale structure and the perfect doubling of the title characters. Neef and Changeling are completely different in characters, upbringing and attitude; yet at the same time they share the original name and surname and in fact, with Changeling being a replacement for the stolen Neef, they are, in a way, one person. And the book title, referring to both of them, makes it obvious that, indeed, we have two different-and-yet-the-same protagonists here.
Only after I finished the book, I realized that this is a novel about the girls' quest and female helpers. Yes, we have important male characters here: the Pooka, Neef's tricker-turned-fairy-godfather, the Curator, Genius of the Metropolitan Museum and the unpleasant tengu called Carlyle, are the most prominent ones. Yet the majority of the actual action is done by girls (Neef and Changeling) with girls' (the vampiress Honey, the Dragon assistant-artist Fleet) help and with magical support from some men (the Curator, Pooka), but mostly from women (Bastet the cat goddess-figurine); and Neef does what she does at least partly because she wants to return home to her fairy godmother Astris, the white lady rat, who is the only mother she ever really knew.

I wholeheartedly recommend the novel to those of the readers who like young adult novel - or those who want something nice, intriguing, moderately scary and rather charming to read to the children of their families.

*BIO*

Did not finish
Couldn’t.
Stilted writing.

I ussualy cant concentrate on fantasys and thats how it was in the beginning with this book but i really got hooked on it as it got towards the middle

Wildly imaginative and entertaining. I loved this book. It is even better if you have some knowledge of NYC geography and/or culture. A great introduction to folklore characters from around the world, complete with a list of them with country of origin and description at the end of the book.