Once upon Tomorrow by Karen Comer

 "She was not sure if her tapestries of truth could restore the kingdom."

There are three voices in this YA verse novel. Miri aged 18 lives in 2025; Aleita aged 16 lives one hundred years into the future in 2125; and Sylvie is a girl from the famous fairy tale - Rumpelstiltskin. She is called The Girl at the Threshold. She is tasked with weaving a tapestry for the King.

"Fairytales, I whisper. Fairytales in a hundred years, no matter how messed up the world, whether there's another pandemic or bushfires over half the world or there are no polar bears left, people will still need stories - and fairytales are the truest of stories."

Sylvie's story:

"I am here to weave the King's three tapestries, to show past, present and future of the kingdom .... But you must know this: it is dangerous for a girl to tell the truth."

The king is displeased with the first tapestry - he throws her into a dungeon. She spins the straw and ...

"The straw flowed into fibre, into .... gold. She was spinning gold. The brittle straw became pliable strings of gold through her hands, around the stone, around the stick.. Gold - she had turned her craft of truth into gold."

"You have made me a hero and therefore, I will make you a queen. But should you make me a fool with the third tapestry, I will make you a grave"

Aleita's story:

The imagined future in this book is a dreadful place. Women live in fear of assault and rape; people have a chip in their brain and are regularly jolted with advertising. When Aleita, for example, looks in the mirror it tells her she is using too much shampoo and that orange makeup does not suit her face. Aleta 2125 works at EveNet . They are working to counteract beauty jolts, consumerism calls, home jolts (household and childcare duties) fertility jolts (to increase the declining population).

"Jolts ... they're getting more invasive, you know, particularly for women. A jolt to stop at a bar and have a drink by yourself, just when a football match has finished and there's a crowd of men looking for ... "

"It is illegal to send jolts without an accompanying vibration". 

"I'm seriously considering deactivating my implant as soon as I turn eighteen. I'll go and find a group of non-neurals, live with them on the margins, knit scarves in exchange for food."

The jolt has - "urged me to test for a new virus, suggested I trial an herbal tab for emotional healing. I try to imagine receiving jolts only a couple of times a day. What I could do with clarity of mind, focus, hours and hours between jolts, to create and daydream and think. Gold."

"If my implant is responsible for my most shallow, surface thoughts, then technically I should be able to find some depth - and my own thoughts - without it?"

Once upon Tomorrow is also a Love letter to libraries of all kinds! 

"Libraries are safe havens - legislated to protect humans from neural implant jolting and personal data harvesting. Libraries are one of the last places you can talk freely. You can be yourself in a library."

"More people should spend time in libraries so that the atmosphere of possibilities and problem-solving and perseverance can soak into more people"

Other reviewers are sure to talk about the symbolism of gold and weaving which appears all through the story. For example there is a mention of a gum tree in WA (2025) that has traces of gold in its leaves and of course Sylvie weaves straw into gold. And there are echoes of weaving in the 2025 setting in the wool shop which people visit to seek advice about their knitting.

And there are feminist themes too: "the miller's daughter, although praised for her talent, was still known by her father's occupation."

Here are some of my random details about the invented words used in this book, the setting and more:

• Transport: louzes are a form of high speed on demand possibly robot driven or automated vehicles and a MOT is a photo.
• Other terminology: online is called onliq. I guess we might call this social media. There are also matribots and sisbots - or robots programmed by external organisations. Hali is a robot - a sisbot - who is assigned to work with Aleta.
• Setting: Melbourne - Yarra River and Castlemaine.
• Contemporary issues from 2025 Mushroom murders; and the role of VCE (exams) in the lives of High School students
• Contemporary book authors - Charlotte Wood, Helen Garnder, Marcus Zusak, Sally Rooney, Tara jane winch, Tim Winton, Nagi cookbook
• Human burial in 2125 - is composting - cremation too much carbon, very few coffins are used "instead we allow our loved ones to compost, to nurture the Earth, to grow a tree."
• CJ, a boy from 2125, is sent to work at Honeycomb childcare - we are told they only want perfect babies now. We learn this place used to be a woollen mill and the carers are called matribots. 
• As well as the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin this story has references to Jung and also the three fates: "Clotho, the spinner who weaves together the thread of life; Lachesis, the allotter who decides how long the thread will be and Atropos, the cutter who snips it."

One of the most dreadful scenes in this book happens near the end (spoiler alert). The authorities who control Hali (the sisbot) instruct Aleta to cut her own flesh

"I grip those scissors, open them up as wide as I can, hold my left arm upright, run both points down the skin on the inside of my arm. Up and down, up and down, up and down. The blood runs from my wrist to my elbow, onto the floor, onto the remains of Mum's scarf. ... Hali is still watching me, eerily quiet."

The audience for this book is Young Adult readers aged 16+. Once upon Tomorrow has 360 pages of fairly small print but more than that I am sure my rambling comments here demonstrate that this is a very complex story. It did capture my attention for several days and even now, a few weeks later, some of the scenes are still on my mind. I think mature readers who have reading stamina are sure to find the ideas in this book intriguing and engrossing. It is due for publication in late April 2026. Thanks to Gleebooks Kids for sharing their advanced reader copy with me. 

Publisher blurb: Miri, an eighteen-year-old hopeful Jungian student, discovers she's pregnant in 2025.

Aleita, sixteen, shelters in the library, the one place free of jolts to her digital implant in 2125.

Interwoven between them stands Sylvie, spinning tapestries to save her life and the kingdom. Sylvie exists in the pages of a mysterious fairytale titled The Girl at the Threshold. Miri, Aleita and Sylvie each need to make a choice in their search for the truth. All three are connected through time by heartbreak, a desperate need to save the environment and a search for family and community. An expansive verse novel about the parallel journeys of three extraordinary girls carving out their own histories - and each other's.

Before reading Once upon Tomorrow it could be helpful to read a few versions of Rumpelstiltskin.  

After reading Once upon Tomorrow, I found a couple of other books for a YA audience based on this fairytale.

I have also read these books by Karen Comer.

Grace Notes

Sunshine on Vinegar Street

The idea that people have chips implanted in their brains was explored in this book from 1984 - it is a story that still haunts me.

Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D Schmidt

Inside the front cover of this book there are seventeen powerful endorsements for this book. Here are a few:

"Schmidt writes with an elegant simplicity in this paean to the power of love" Kirkus Star review

"The poetic and uncluttered prose of this short beautiful novel resonates for a long time" Book Trust

"This is a phenomenal book. One of the best-crafted, most heartrending novels I've read this year ... the prose is stark, impeccable, faultless" Minerva Reads

Jack's parents agree to foster a young boy called Joseph Brook. Jack is in Grade Six and Joseph is in Grade Eight. Jack lives on a dairy farm in Maine and right from the start his parents expect Joseph to assist with the milking - morning and night. Terrible, terrible, terrible things have happened to Joseph but his healing begins when he forms a relationship with a very special cow called Rosie.

In chapter one we discover some of Joseph's story but as his trust in his new family develops we discover so much more - filling out these brief facts:

• Joseph has been in Juvenile detention.
• Something bad happened there and one of the other kids gave him some powerful drugs and Joseph had a very violent reaction against one of the staff - trying to kill her.
• As a result of this Joseph was sent to jail - to a place called Stone Mountain. 

"He won't talk about what happened to him there. But since he left Stone Mountain, he won't wear anything orange. He won't let anyone stand behind him. He won't let anyone touch him. He won't go into rooms that are too small. And he won't eat canned peaches. ... (and) he has a daughter."

"He looked like a regular eighth-grade kid at Eastham Middle School. Black eyes, black hair almost over his eyes, a little less than middle for height, a little less than middle for weight, sort of middle for everything else."

Jack and Joseph share a room. Jack is only twelve but he shows enormous wisdom in the way he treats and talks to Joseph. I loved the gentle unfolding of their relationship.

Read more plot details in the review by The Book Bag.

There are scenes that will linger forever with me from this book. I love Jack and his family, I want to thank the social worker for all her efforts to help Joseph and huge thanks to Gary D Schmidt who has written a tragic story but one with so much hope for a better future for little Jupiter - Joseph's daughter. I'm also cheering for the wonderful teachers - the maths teacher, the PE teacher and the English teacher. 

"Mrs Halloway in language arts was calling on him a lot - I think because she saw him reading Walden. She asked him if he liked it and he said he'd already read it once and he was reading it again, and she asked if he had read her favourite Thoreau book, A week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, and he said 'A Week on the what?' and she took him to the library and they checked it out together. You know how teachers are. If they get you to take a book they love, they're yours for life."

I started this book on my train journey this morning and devoured 60 pages of the 182 then on the return journey I finished the whole book which was wonderful but I was crying on the bus - luckily it was fairly empty. Some months ago I compiled a list of books that made readers cry - I can see Orbiting Jupiter is already on that list suggested by one of the people who joined that Facebook thread. 

This is a YA novel and I would say it is for ages 13+. I picked this book up at a recent charity book sale. It was first published in 2015. If you can't find a print copy there is an ebook version and an audio book version. 

I previously LOVED The Wednesday Wars by Gary D Schmidt:

The Wednesday Wars

Here are some Middle Grade novels about Foster Families:

One for the Murphys

The Star outside my Window

When Friendship followed me Home