The Philippine Online Chronicles

It wasn’t until I picked up Heather Swain’s Me, My Elf and I did I finally meet elves again. It’s one of those books that you can’t help but notice when browsing the bookstore shelves, especially because there’s a gorgeous blonde, green-eyed girl staring at you from the cover. Heather Swain’s first young adult novel introduces us to Zephyr Addler, a fifteen-year-old elf from Alverland, an elfin land somewhere in… Michigan. The Addler family decided to leave their home to support their dad, Drake Addler, a rising musician, as he goes on tour. Zephyr takes this chance to see if she improve on what she used to do back in Alverland – singing, dancing and performing for their festivals – so she gets enrolled in a prestigious performing arts school in Brooklyn. Zephyr had known it wouldn’t be easy, but she hadn’t know that it would be this hard, especially with all the drama that erdlers (what elves call humans) can have in their everyday lives. As Zephyr makes new friends in her school, catches the eye of a cute boy she likes, pretends to be an erdler and gets used to erdler technology, she also ends up threatening the status of the resident popular girl because of her elfin beauty and charm. (Sound familiar?)

It’s not a new thing to put magical creatures in urban settings, with the likes of vampires, angels, werewolves and faeries suddenly invading small, quiet towns all over America, as if it were the hip thing for supernatural creatures to do. (Though this is my first book involving such creatures in a bustling city setting.)

But what comes to mind when you hear the world elf? Do you imagine little guys and girls in cute little clothes, with pointy ears and shoes, who like to play mischievous tricks on other people, or make toys for Santa during Christmas? In Zephyr’s world, real elves look pretty much like humans, except that they tend to be very tall, thin, and pale, with blond hair and green eyes. They’re hardly mischievous, leaning towards kindness and affection, but they do have a temper, and they do have magic, but using their powers out of ill-will can cause them to lose their powers, or become Dark Elves and be banished from their elfin community.

It’s a creative world that Swain painted, but unfortunately, we don’t get to really explore it. As much as I wanted to learn more about the origins of the elves or their magic, or what makes them different from human beings, the author didn’t really focus on the setting of the novel and instead simply plopped Zephyr into the human world. It’s understandable that Zephyr couldn’t openly perform magic while in school (although she slips at times during moments of anger), but I kind of hoped that more would be revealed of the elven world. Where are the other elves? Is Alverland the only place for them? Why does it seem like only Zephyr’s family that lives in Alverland? Who trains them to use their magic? If they don’t go to erdler school, who teaches them how to read and write? Do they have their own elfin language? If it weren’t for the small references to magic and their lack of knowledge of technology (and believe me, that was emphasized a lot throughout the novel - it was almost cute when Zephyr's cousin learned how to YouTube), Zephyr and her family seemed like just an odd family who liked music and wore tunics all the time. (Which I take isn’t really a strange thing when you’re in NYC.)

The part of the story that focuses on the erdler/human world, where Zephyr immerses herself, would ideally have been made more interesting to make up for the lack of Alverland’s hook (the presence of magic) but that part of the story falls short, too. The story of a new girl befriended by  unpopular schoolmates and who ends up threatening the standing of the popular girl and winning the popular girl’s boyfriend is an age-old tale. It’s still possible to execute it well, if done creatively, but it never felt like there was anything new in the way it was used in Me, My Elf and I. It was like watching a tame version of Mean Girls and Gossip Girl, where the underdog wins in the end. I guess I could blame it on the clichéd characters, because I believe strong characters can make the most predictable storyline captivating. The antagonist, Bella, was the classic mean girl who uses people for her own advantage, and Zephyr’s friends are the typical, sort-of unpopular diverse kids who just wanted to make fun of and embarrass the popular kid for once. While I do love Zephyr’s friends and their wacky ways, sometimes I feel like the two of them were simply stand-in melting pots of different cultures and religion all rolled into one: Mercedes is the Catholic, Puerto Rican friend, and Ari is a musician, a goth, gay and Jew boy. There was even a Japanese boy named Kenji who taught Zephyr how to use a computer and draws a manga based on her -- I almost wondered when a Filipino would be mentioned in the novel!

Out of all the characters introduced in the novel, only two characters stood out. First was Drake Addler, whose physical features kind of remind me of Stoick the head Viking in How to Train Your Dragon (except that he’s blonde), and whose personality reminded me of Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. He seemed to be the only one who understood Zephyr, but he never shied away from laying down the law when needed. If there was ever a true elf in the story, it's definitely Drake.

The other character, strangely enough, was my least favorite character in the story, Timber, Zephyr’s romantic interest. He somehow broke the mold of what the typical popular ex-boyfriend of the most popular girl should be, although I'm still not convinced of how he turned out at the end of the story, and I'm not really sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Predictable plot and clichéd characters aside, what I did end up liking about this book was the sense of community and family expressed amongst the elves. Imagine being able to find a lost child by calling out to her with your love? Or always choosing to do the most compassionate thing as a first instinct? fathering one part, Zephyr’s father says to her:

"You have to be true to yourself, true to who you are on the inside. And who you are, Zephyr, is an elf. Be proud of that. Be fierce about it and protect that part of yourself because in the end, that's all we've got."

I can substitute my name for Zephyr's and whatever quality I have for the elf part - Christian, Filipino, woman, geek - and this could be a very empowering motivational speech when I need to be reminded of who I am. In this life, which most of us go through blindly, wondering why we are here and what we are supposed to do, we can learn something from these Alverland elves.

As flawed as the story was, it's refreshing to read something that isn't dripping of darkness, doom and sparkly supernatural creatures in love with humans. There's a planned sequel for this book coming this year entitled Selfish Elf Wish, and I hope that improves on this. (And maybe we'll see more of Kenji too -- I think there's more to him than what meets the eye.) Me, My Elf and I isn't really the kind of book that I'd rave about or recommend to everyone, but it's a book that I wouldn't mind giving to a teenage girl to read to pass the remaining days of summer.

[Image source: fantasticfiction.co.uk]