Hazel and Jack are best friends until the day Jack stops speaking to Hazel and disappears. Armed with the power of story and the strength of friendship, Hazel embarks on a quest deep into a wintry wood to save her best friend from the curse of a frozen heart. Ursu's imaginative retelling of "The Snow Queen" builds on a foundation of literature and fairy tale to deliver a tale of courage, friendship, and love.
Rebecca
— From Breadcrumbs
“Ursu pulls Hazel and Jack into the world of The Snow Queen in a way that makes complete emotional sense. There's something here that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt that he or she didn't belong. For voracious readers, there's extra payoff in spotting nods to everything from Alice in Wonderland to The Phantom Tollbooth to Harry Potter.”
— Shoshana Flax, Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, MA
The winner of numerous awards and recipient of four starred reviews, Anne Ursu's Breadcrumbs is a stunning and heartbreaking story of growing up, wrapped in a modern-day fairy tale.
Once upon a time, Hazel and Jack were best friends. But that was before he stopped talking to her and disappeared into a forest with a mysterious woman made of ice. Now it's up to Hazel to go in after him. Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen," Breadcrumbs is a stunningly original fairy tale of modern-day America, a dazzling ode to the power of fantasy, and a heartbreaking meditation on how growing up is as much a choice as it is something that happens to us.
In Breadcrumbs, Anne Ursu tells, in her one-of-a-kind voice, a story that brings together fifty years of children's literature in a tale as modern as it is timeless. Hazel's journey to come to terms with her evolving friendship with Jack will deeply resonate with young readers.
Supports the Common Core State Standards
Anne Ursu is the author of Breadcrumbs, which Kirkus Reviews called a "transforming testament to the power of friendship" in a starred review, and was acclaimed as one of the best books of 2011 by The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com, and the Chicago Public Library. It was also on the IndieBound Next List and was an NPR Backseat Book Club featured selection. She was also the recipient of the 2013 McKnight Fellowship Award in Children's Literature. Anne teaches at Hamline University's MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. She lives in Minneapolis with her son and four cats—monster fighters, all.
Erin McGuire is an illustrator of picture books and middle grade novels, including Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu, the Nancy Drew Diaries series, and Sleeping Beauty by Cynthia Rylant. When not drawing, she enjoys reading, cooking, and camping. Erin lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband and two cats. Visit her online at www.emcguire.net.