Emily Zhao's Bookshelf

Seeing this book on sale at the local second-hand bookstore and picking it up for a couple dollars to see what I missed out on when I was younger, I was thoroughly appalled that this has a hefty amount of following instalments and that so many young teen girls are still reading this.

The basic premise is another twist on the classic fairytale ideas, however unlike Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle, the characters are irritating, cruel, and shallow, leading to an annoying reading experience. On one hand, I know I shouldn't expect children's novels to be incredibly thought provoking, however I challenge that idea as much of the fiction I read when I was younger I still enjoy to this day. Percy Jackson, Artemis Fowl, Mysterious Benedict Society are just some of the names I can immediately pull from my mind about stories aimed at teens that covered a wide range of topics with deeply enthralling and likeable characters. The School for Good and Evil is thought provoking in a negative way; i.e. should this even be recommended to young readers?

I take a strong issue with the message of the novel. I think the author wanted to emphasize the strange double standard between how "beautiful" characters are automatically associated with goodness and "ugly" characters are perceived as evil. Physical looks are an extremely large part of this story, with our main characters constantly commenting and observing how those around them look. Sophie, the conventionally attractive blonde, has wanted her whole life to be recruited as a princess and wants to escape her crass family. She wishes for ages to be taken away and performs all sorts of charitable deeds in an effort to be perceived as kind and princess-like. Agatha, who Sophie looks down for since she doesn't take care of how she looks, is shunned as the child of the local witch and only has Sophie and her black cat as a friend. Sophie insinuates that she only befriends her as an act of charity, but Agatha cares deeply about their friendship.

Eventually, when Sophie gets taken away by skeletal dinosaur birds to the School, Agatha tries to stop them and gets carried along, before being dropped into the opposite school than expected. Sophie lands headfirst into the School for Evil and Agatha is gently placed in the School for Good. Obviously, S throws multiple tantrums and refuses to believe even until after the end of the novel that she doesn't deserve a place as the good one, because since she's so beautiful and Agatha is so not, there is obviously something wrong.

I think the story is trying to get at the message that looks are not indicative of one's moral character and personality. However, all this goes out the window when during the final battle, the two schools are fighting each other, and since "good" attacked the other side first due to a misunderstanding orchestrated by Sophie, they switch and suddenly the "evil" people become conventionally attractive and the "good" people lose all their conventionally attractive features. This is so wrong on so many levels. Not only does it completely go against the original decent message of the story, it further reinforces the stereotype that it was trying to debunk. Not to mention, this theme is so heavy handed that each school has classes dedicated to "smiling" and "how to be beautiful", along with "uglification". The conventional, shallow, and frankly childish perception of these terms is deeply concerning to see in a novel directed at an audience of teen girls.

Furthermore, a large part of the story is dedicated to men, being infatuated with them and letting them dictate social order and personal happiness. S is obsessed with Tedros, the most popular boy in the School for Good who is incredibly rude to A and often makes derogatory comments towards her. Every other "good girl in the story seems to have some life-ending interest in men. There was space for commentary about how society often pushes women to believe that they need a partner to be truly complete, however, the novel starts building a relationship between A and Tedros, demonstrating to the impressionable teen audience that it's totally fine to forgive someone who was incredibly rude to you, since he's a prince and you're a girl that needs a guy like him.

S uses A as a personal foot wipe so many times and yet, A always comes back to save S in times of need when S never cares to do so. I understand how part of it is to show how truly "evil" S is despite her outward appearance, but it makes the idea of "good" appear to be letting the people around you walk all over you and to forgive them each time. To S, their friendship is a tool to achieve the means that she wants, while A taking on the role as the helper friend is portrayed as the kind thing to do. The book is never able to truly separate "good" from "beautiful" and "evil" from "ugly". The lessons being derived from this book are truly appalling and shallow and I hope that teens find other fiction to obsess over.