Girls Made of Snow and Glass

Girls Made of Snow and Glass

by Melissa Bashardoust
Girls Made of Snow and Glass

Girls Made of Snow and Glass

by Melissa Bashardoust

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

Melissa Bashardoust’s acclaimed debut novel Girls Made of Snow and Glass is “Snow White as it’s never been told before...a feminist fantasy fairy tale not to be missed” (BookPage)!

“Utterly superb.” —ALA Booklist, starred review
“Dark, fantastical, hauntingly evocative.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“An empowering and progressive original retelling.” —SLJ, starred review

Sixteen-year-old Mina is motherless, her magician father is vicious, and her silent heart has never beat with love for anyone—has never beat at all, in fact, but she’d always thought that fact normal. She never guessed that her father cut out her heart and replaced it with one of glass. When she moves to Whitespring Castle and sees its king for the first time, Mina forms a plan: win the king’s heart with her beauty, become queen, and finally know love. The only catch is that she’ll have to become a stepmother.

Fifteen-year-old Lynet looks just like her late mother, and one day she discovers why: a magician created her out of snow in the dead queen’s image, at her father’s order. But despite being the dead queen made flesh, Lynet would rather be like her fierce and regal stepmother, Mina. She gets her wish when her father makes Lynet queen of the southern territories, displacing Mina. Now Mina is starting to look at Lynet with something like hatred, and Lynet must decide what to do—and who to be—to win back the only mother she’s ever known…or else defeat her once and for all.

Entwining the stories of both Lynet and Mina in the past and present, Girls Made of Snow and Glass traces the relationship of two young women doomed to be rivals from the start. Only one can win all, while the other must lose everything—unless both can find a way to reshape themselves and their story.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781250134691
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication date: 12/31/2018
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 384
Sales rank: 89,119
Product dimensions: 5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)
Lexile: 920L (what's this?)
Age Range: 12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Melissa Bashardoust received her degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley, where she rediscovered her love for creative writing, children’s literature, and fairy tales and their retellings. She currently lives in Southern California with a cat named Alice and more copies of Jane Eyre than she probably needs. Girls Made of Snow and Glass is her first novel.

Reading Group Guide

Welcome to the Reading Group Guide for Girls Made of Snow and Glass. Please note: In order to provide reading groups with the most informed and thought-provoking questions possible, it is necessary to reveal important aspects of the plot of this novel—as well as the ending. If you have not finished reading Girls Made of Snow and Glass, we respectfully suggest that you may want to wait before reviewing this guide. 1. Girls Made of Snow and Glass is told from the alternating perspectives of Lynet and Mina. Which character did you feel more drawn to initially? Did that change over the course of the novel?

2. What do you think it was important for the story to be told in this way? In what ways would the story have been different if only Mina narrated? Or only Lynet?

3. How do Lynet and Mina grow and change over the course of the story? What do they learn about each other and their world?

4. Are there any specific passages or images in GMOSAG that resonated with you? If so, what were they? Why did they stick with you?

5. Throughout the novel, characters draw comparisons between Lynet and Queen Emilia, Lynet and Mina, and Mina and Queen Emilia. What purpose do these comparisons serve? Do they help or harm Lynet, Emilia, and Mina? What are the qualities that are compared? What do they say about how we think of women in society?

6. King Nicholas and Gregory both create narratives for their daughters that impact how Lynet and Mina see themselves: King Nicholas positions Lynet as the perfect replacement for Queen Emilia, and Gregory tells Mina that she is unable to love. How do Lynet and Mina overcome these destinies? What aspects are crucial to them realizing they are more than what the men in their lives have told them they are?

7. How do the Pigeons serve as a device to keep feminine stereotypes alive and therefore keep Lynet from realizing her full strength and potential? Is there anything in your life that plays a similar role?

8. Betrayal is a theme throughout GMOSAG. We see it with Mina and Gregory, Lynet and Gregory, Mina and Lynet, as well as Nadia and Lynet. How is the betrayal between the female characters different and therefore redeemable? Do you agree with the characters’ decisions to forgive, or not to forgive? Why or why not?

9. Mina’s ability to control glass and the power she wields over others with her beauty are both her strength and her weakness. Discuss how she wrestles with this and how it impacts her relationships.

10. Mina creates Felix out of loneliness, but then he is not able to fully fill that void. How does the Huntsman reflect Mina’s emotional arc throughout the story?

11. How does Girls Made of Snow and Glass subvert the fairy tale archetype and the Snow White story? How does it reinforce it?

12. Did you find references to other fairy tales besides Snow White in Girls Made of Snow and Glass? What were they?

13. How is the ending of Girls Made of Snow and Glass like the ending of a traditional fairytale? How is it different?

14. Lynet is connected to the North, snow, and the cold, whereas Mina’s true self is in the South. How does the author use the separate regions of the kingdom to capture the essence of both characters? What does it mean that neither one of them is able to truly find their real self until they return home in some capacity?

15. Discuss Sybil’s curse. Do you think it was real?

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