Iron Hearted Violet

by Kelly Barnhill (Published by Little, Brown)

Nominated for in

The end of their world begins with a story. This one.

In most fairy tales, princesses are beautiful, dragons are terrifying, and stories are harmless. This isn’t most fairy tales.

Princess Violet is plain, reckless, and quite possibly too clever for her own good. Particularly when it comes to telling stories. One day she and her best friend, Demetrius, stumble upon a hidden room and find a peculiar book. A forbidden book. It tells a story of an evil being–called the Nybbas–imprisoned in their world. The story cannot be true–not really. But then the whispers start. Violet and Demetrius, along with an ancient, scarred dragon, may hold the key to the Nybbas’s triumph…or its demise. It all depends on how they tell the story. After all, stories make their own rules.