The Toymaker’s Apprentice

Stefan Drosselmeyer’s mother has just died at the start of Smith’s (Orleans) fantasy riff on Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.” Stefan, apprenticed to his toy maker father, wants to ease his grief by spending his journeyman years somewhere other than his home of Napoleonic-era Nuremberg. Luckily, his father’s cousin, Christian, takes him on. Christian is clock maker to the King of Boldavia, and a royal appointment promises Stefan the best working materials and the heights of prestige. However, Christian came to Nuremberg on a quest that has driven him for seven long years—and made him the enemy of every rat and mouse in the world, especially the Queen of Mice, who is attempting to make her people into an army. Smith’s usage of elements from Hoffmann, Dumas’s later adaptation, and the perennially popular Nutcracker ballet is extremely clever, though the dreamlike fantasy realms of Hoffmann and the solidity of Smith’s Nuremberg mesh less well. Stefan is a personable protagonist, but while his story inescapably recalls the terrors and wonders of the original, it doesn’t quite succeed in recreating them. Ages 10–up. (Oct.)