My Dream Job

Once again my baby sis has recommended the perfect book The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman.  The book is about a high-school girl named Elizabeth.  She gets a job at the New York Circulating Material Repository, which is essentially a library for things.  People can come to the repository and request just about anything, old clothes for a play, valuable pieces of art for comparisons, ancient chess sets just to play with, all kinds of cool stuff.  Elizabeth is a page along with the perfect Anjali, the handsome basketball player Marc, and the brooding Aaron.  There job is mainly to get the various objects that are requested and send
them up to the main room for distribution and collect and re shelve the returned items.  The items are divided into stacks, so things like Clothes and Shoes would be in Stack 2 or Household items in Stack 7 and so on.  This was actually all pretty interesting in and of itself, but hey this is a story so time for a twist.  Everyday items are not the only thing being kept and loaned at the repository.  There are some sections that contain magical items, the main one being the Grimm Collection, which houses actual items from the Grimm fairy-tales (think flying carpets and magic mirrors).  There is also a Lovecraft collection and a few other cool literary themed ones as well.  Unfortunately somebody has been stealing items from the Grimm collection and replacing them with fakes that quickly lose there magic.  Hijinks ensue, along with false accusations and a love quadrangle for the ages.  Eventually with the help of Jaya Anjali's hilarious spunky 10 year old sister, and Andre Marc's adorable and brave 3 year old brother the bad guy is caught and the Grimm collection saved.  While the story was interesting, I mostly love the book for the Repository and all the possibilities it holds.  The fact that certain people (including the pages) can earn the privilege of checking things out of the special collections makes the options even bigger.  To check something out of a special collection you have to leave a deposit worthy of a

fairy-tale, say your first-born child, or your sense of direction and when you return the artifact you get your deposit back.  This plays very much into the story and also adds another cool dimension.  The characters were a lot of fun, fairly believable and fleshed out enough so they are all distinct.  My favorites were definitely the younger siblings who brought a great humor and forthrightness to the whole thing.  This is a stand-alone book, with all the loose ends tied up, but I could easily see more stories set in this world, even if different characters were used.  This is a quick read and a lot of fun, I would have loved to have this job when I was in high-school...Oh who am I kidding I would love to have this job now!  The book is a great one for almost any age, with nothing really objectional in it and a great way to get into some of the older fairy-tales, it's not a wow I have to think about this book cause it is so deep kind of book, more of a man I can't believe I finished it already I kinda wish it was a series kind of book.  I give it 10 out of 12 dancing slippers.

What job did you have in high-school?  What would you ask the magic mirror?  What artifact would you borrow from the Grimm Collection?  Did I mention there were giant rats involved?