Elizabeth lives a lonely life. She has a stepmother who loves to give extra chores, two stepsisters who are spoiled and manipulative, and an absent minded father. To make matters worse, she just started a new school and is having a hard time making friends. When she successfully completes a big research paper on the Grimm Brothers her history teacher offers her the job of a lifetime-working as a page at the New York Circulating Material Repository. After an odd job interview consisting of sorting buttons, Elizabeth is hired and learns her way around the massive repository, which houses and lends out wonderful things such as a table that sets itself with whatever food you desire and Shakespeare’s doublet. She has also made friends with the other pages, one of which is the star basketball player at her school. But she has heard there is a Grimm collection somewhere in the building and cannot rest until she finds out all about it. She encounters more mysteries along the way as items are disappearing, and other items seem to be losing their magical properties. The closer Elizabeth gets to answers, the crazier things get, including being stalked by a ginormous bird and taking a long trip to Nowhere.
This was a very cute story, and I really enjoyed it. One annoyance I had was never being sure what age Elizabeth and some of the other characters are. At points they seem to be in the midst of high school, then their conversations will more closely resemble middle school. There were a few places that it dragged but overall I was engaged in the story and kept saying “just one more chapter!” I look forward to the next book in the series, maybe Elizabeth will get to investigate the H.G. Wells section more? 🙂
Other time, other place 