When 11-year-old Joplin's grandfather dies, her mom says
that Joplin can keep anything of her grandfather's that she wants. Joplin
selects a red cookie jar that contains no cookies, just pieces of a broken
china platter. Joplin's mother's friend Jen (though Joplin calls her "Aunt
Jen") has the platter restored to what it was, a scene of a landscape and
a young girl, around Joplin's age, standing next to a pond.
Joplin has no friends and, feeling lonely, wishes that the
girl in the platter could be her friend. The very next morning, the girl
is sitting in the garden behind the apartment. The girl introduces herself as
Sofie. Sofie explains that she is cursed, and she tells Joplin her story.
400 years ago, Sofie had lived in a little Dutch village
with her mother, father, two brothers, and a sister. Often, her mother would
send her to the market to buy and sell basic necessities like food and
cloth. On the way, Sofie would pass a large house that belonged to a potter
called Hans van der Brock. He would often be standing outside, watching
everyone who went by, looking for ideas to paint on china that he made. One day
he asked Sofie to pose for him. After that, she would pose for him practically
every week. One day, he had her stand in a very specific pose, and, rather than
drawing her picture with charcoal, he painted her picture on a china platter.
He then sprinkled three different powders on it, one yellow, one white, one
blue. Then, suddenly, she was not standing where she had been. Instead, she was
looking up at his face. She had become part of a picture on a platter. In
addition, she now had to grant every wish the owner of the platter made.
Hans wished for immortality, which meant that right now he is
out there, somewhere.
Sofie just wanted to go back home, and Joplin promised to
help set her free. But Sofie said it would be impossible, as the only one with
the power to free her was the one who enslaved her, 400 years ago...
I'm just going to say this right now: I loved this story. It
has great characters, a cool plot, a few neat twists, and it's suitable for
people aged 9+. If you ask me, Joplin,
Wishing is a lot like Aladdin;
Sofie is like a genie, Joplin is her Aladdin, Sofie is trapped, and Joplin
temporarily releases her, so now Sofie has to grant Joplin's wishes, though
Joplin is kind and doesn't simply use Sofie for that purpose. Joplin is
determined to help Sofie under any circumstances, good or bad.
Joplin, Wishing is
about how true friendship can really (literally!) be magical. The front of
the book asks "Can one last wish set her free?" Maybe it can.
--------------------------
Daddy's afterthoughts: This story is a spectacular twist on the Becoming
the Genie trope. Unlike Disney's Aladdin
(which young people are, for better or worse, much more likely to be familiar
with than its source material, One
Thousand and One Nights), this story does not have - nor does it need -
the barely-contained chaos of Robin Williams' genie. This novel does not go for
slapstick. It also has aspects of The
Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (young girl stays at the house of an
eccentric older relative, young girl finds a fascinating object, and magical
adventures ensue) and the myth of Pygmalion
and Galatea (lonely character crafts a sculpture,
realizes how lonely he is in real life, prays for a companion, and the
goddess Aphrodite brings his statue to life). Diane Stanley's
2017 story weaves these familiar elements together in a novel that will appeal
to young readers (Kirkus suggests 8-12,
but I might go as high as 14, or even higher, as it is a lovely story).
