**Jax Reviews ~ The May Bird Trilogy ~ Jodie Lynn Anderson**

*******Jax Reviews*******

The May Bird Trilogy

Most people aren't very comfortable in the woods, but the woods of Briery Swamp fit May Bird like a fuzzy mitten. There, she is safe from school and the taunts and teases of kids who don't understand her. Hidden in the trees, May is a warrior princess, and her cat, Somber Kitty, is her brave guardian.

Then May falls into the lake.

When she crawls out, May finds herself in a world that most certainly does not feel like a fuzzy mitten. In fact it is a place few living people have ever seen. Here, towns glow blue beneath zipping stars and the people -- people? -- walk through walls. Here the Book of the Dead holds the answers to everything in the universe. And here, if May is discovered, the horrifyingly evil Bo Cleevil will turn her into nothing. 

May Bird must get out.

Fast.

Within these pages, Jodie Lynn Anderson shares with us the beginning of May Bird's daring journey into the Ever After, a haunting place where true friends -- and one terrible foe -- await her on every corner.

***

May Bird has always been a bit...different. While most of her classmates were riding their bikes, she was running around the woods dressed as a warrior princess with her hairless cat at her side. And instead of spending summer vacation at birthday parties, May was discovering a mysterious lake hidden among the trees -- and stumbling into the land of ghosts, the Ever After.

A fearful and fantastic realm located among the stars, the Ever After is full of all manner of things that go bump in the night. And if May is to find her way out again, she must reach the mysterious Lady of North Farm, who lives in a cold, forbidding land that even the spooks find spooky.

With her courageous (yet melancholy) kitty and a ragtag group of spectral friends she's picked up along the way, May is determined to escape the Afterlife. But first she must face her very worst fears, and there's no telling who will make it through...or who will be left behind.

***

At Hog Wallow Middle School, May Ellen Bird was always slightly invisible. Then she went on a long trip to the land of the dead, where ghost towns glowed blue in the dark dusk and spooky specters dwelled in cities on the Dead Sea.

Back on Earth at last, May and her hairless cat, Somber Kitty, are now famous, their faces plastered across souvenirs and sportswear that read "May Bird Went to the Land of the Dead and All She Brought Me Was This Lousy T-Shirt." But, finally in the spotlight, May feels more than ever that she doesn't belong. Every night she sits by her bedroom window, gazing at the sky and dreaming of another place, wishing -- despite herself -- to be back among the ghosts.

And then one night she gets her heart's desire in a way she would never have wished for. Only the Ever After isn't anything like the world May left behind three years ago. The spirits have vanished, and the towns -- once full of every manner of things that go bump in the night -- are deserted. Evil Bo Cleevil has made the Ever After as cold as his own frigid soul, and put up a bunch of tacky malls to boot.

Now, with her friends missing and enemies all around her, May must find her way to the edge of the universe, where night swallows the stars, where allies are few and often have bad breath, where endings can also be beginnings, and where the truest hero lurks in the unlikeliest of souls. But Bo Cleevil's got one last trick up his sleeve -- one that no one on Earth is ready for.

With the worlds of the living and the dead in the balance, will May's courage fail her one last time? Or will she finally become the warrior she was always meant to be?

I’ve been reading a lot of different books over the last four years, and also during those four years my sister was nagging me to read May Bird. I always was busy reading something else (e.g. Fablehaven, Moby Dick, Beyonders, etc.). So this summer, with all this free time, I decided to read it. The books are ones I’m not likely to forget. Jam-packed with excitement, morals, and dead people, May Bird has made a long-lasting impression on me.

May Bird is a skinny, dark-haired girl with knobby knees and a hairless cat named Somber Kitty. One day while in the woods, she goes into the mysterious lake. On the other side, there is somewhere very much different than what she left. This is the world of the dead, ruled by the evil Bo Cleevil who will stop at nothing to fill up the emptiness in his heart. Welcome to the Ever After, where you go when you die.

Along the way, May encounters some friends, including Pumpkin, the lovable house-ghost with a huge gash of a mouth, a pumpkin shaped head, and a yellow tuft of hair.

John the Jibber is a knave- he was killed by his own crewmembers. Together, the three companions journey to open The Book of the Dead so May can make it out still alive.

The sequel is the same plot: May’s still in there and needs to get out, while avoiding the Bogey’s sucking fingers that will turn her into nothing. And that’s one of the many dangers she will face, from an evil cat called Commander Berzerko, zombies, ghouls, goblins, to even Evil Bo Cleevil himself.

The third takes its whole plot out of a plot twist in the beginning of it, so it’s hard to explain, but May is older: she’s not the girl that got stuck in the Ever After, she has gazelle-like legs instead of knobby knees, and long flowing hair instead of her bob cut. Because it didn’t bring anything but unhappiness in her house to bring up her memories, she suppresses them. Then, one day, she is back. Stuck in the Ever After Again three years later and not in the way she expects. What she finds there is frightening- and not just the tacky strip malls. The Ever After is an unhappy place, where vampires comb the skies, and ghouls and goblins call the shots (and enjoy yoga). Her friends are scattered, and if the Ever After has any hope left, she must assemble them and make a heroic last stand against the great evil that inhabits Bo Cleevil.

This trilogy is much darker than it might seem at first (Evil Cleevil? Really?). However, once you start reading it, you can’t stop. Unless, of course, you are Skyler and started reading it before the third came out and had to stop. I would rate this at (yes, I know it sounds a little over-rated, but read it) 5 worms. I rated the May Bird trilogy at 5 worms because it had wonderful characters, superb conflict, and of course, a great plot.

Jodi Lynn Anderson has a fun voice, and is obviously a talented author. The way she wrapped up the trilogy was amazing. I can’t tell it to you, dear reader, because of obvious reasons. The only way to figure out what happens, and see how good it is is to read it. My review can’t describe it half as well as the book itself.