The Great Good Thing by Roderick Townley, 224 pages. Atheneum Books (Simon & Schuster), 2025. $20.
Language: PG (2 swears, 0 “f”); Mature Content: PG; Violence: G
BUYING ADVISORY: MS - ADVISABLE
APPEALS TO: SEVERAL
A character in a book that’s been left on the shelf, Sylvie (12yo) gets discouraged from a couple of false starts. Everyone is doing their best, but their story is continuously interrupted. And then Sylvie breaks the rules and leaves her story behind, exploring a new world where she must save their newest reader, Claire.
At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the book within the book, but I ended up enjoying Sylvie’s story more than I expected. Townley illustrates how beautifully stories can brighten, influence, and change the lives of readers—and it’s fun to think about how our favorite characters might love us just as much as we love them.
Sylvie is depicted with light skin on the cover. The mature content rating is for mild sexual harassment and mild scary elements.
Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen

I cannot believe I missed this book when it was first released! I was actually a child then and would have gone feral for this story. It has everything: a strong, courageous princess, a reader (!), and a story that pushes the boundaries of what fantasy and fiction can be. I think that some of the magic doesn't quite hold up to an older, more scrutinizing eye, but this is a small quibble, especially in the face of so much magic, delight, and healing. I think this would be a tremendous gift for a young reader experiencing grief; it does the emotional work without feeling like an after-school special or self-help book, and the magic makes it all very soothing and immersive. I cannot wait to read the next books in the series!

This book has a very classic literature feel along the lines of the A Wrinkle in Time series. Reading it was a little slow going but I think this book was just aimed a bit younger than I expected. I will definitely pass it along to some elementary school teachers as the themes of remembering precious moments and people are very important. The plot was also a bit loose and confusing for me.

This book has a high-concept hook: “characters native to a novel finally get a reader after a years without one, and the princess of the story finds herself able to travel into the reader’s dreams.” That, in itself, would probably be worth the price of admission, tackling the oft-tread ‘world within a book’ idea using totally unique worldbuilding that manages to also be unintrusive (not to mention the equally interesting exploration of the world of the human mind).

However, this isn’t just an adventure in a high-concept pair of settings. It is also a remarkably melancholy (especially in its middle section) tale regarding the transient nature of human memory and of works of the imagination. The characters from the book are apparently not distinct from people who have died or beings born from dreams, and all are subject to the same forces within the human memory.

However, it isn’t just a high-concept setting with a profound and melancholy theme, it’s also a very well-plotted journey narrative as Princess Sylvie makes her way across realms, witnessing a tender multigenerational drama (sometimes without understanding what she sees) as she does so.

The Great Good Thing is a wonderful work that can appeal to many ages and many perspectives. It deserves to be republished as many times as possible.