Magic Mirror

Magic Mirror is Orson Scott Card’s 1999 illustrated fable, written for the Magic Mirror gift-book line and aimed at older children and adult collectors. Hattie, the protagonist, finds a magic mirror in the back of a curiosity shop and is asked the question the mirror asks every visitor: who do you want to be. The narrative that follows is the kind of carefully shaped parable Card had been working in his short fiction for two decades, here pared down to picture-book length without the prose ever feeling diminished.

This is minor Card by design, but minor Card is still considered Card. The fable mechanics are tight (the mirror requests, the consequences of each choice, the structural pivot at the end where Hattie chooses something the mirror did not offer), and the prose carries the cadences of his Tales of Alvin Maker work. The illustrations are part of the experience: this is one of the rare Card titles where the printed object matters as much as the text. The book will be more rewarding to readers who already know his short fiction (Folk of the Fringe, Maps in a Mirror) than to first-timers.

Recommended for Orson Scott Card readers who want a small late-1990s gift-book outing in the parable tradition (Lloyd Alexander, Susan Cooper’s short fiction). Books like Magic Mirror are unusual in his catalog; this one is a quiet pleasure. Three stars.