Once Upon a Wickedness

An exciting adventure novel for contemporary kids with a fairytale setting, a daring hero and message that you're never too young and powerless to stand up to tyrants!

What happens when a group of school children, led by the resourceful ten-year-old Dance Violet, dare to ask those in power some hard questions? Find out in this magical novel by the bestselling Fleur Beale, stunningly illustrated by Lily Uivel.

Ten-year-old orphan Dance Violet might have had a short and troubled history, but it hasn't dampened her warrior spirit - not in the slightest. And that's a good thing, because something is rotten in her village, and no one else has the courage to try put things right.

People who ask questions disappear overnight and the village children are left to fend for themselves under the tyrannical schoolteachers Murk and Misselthwaite. There are whispers that a beautiful but wicked woman, 'the golden-haired hellion', appeared at a wedding ten years ago and was the start of all the trouble.

Dance has some gifts that she's only just beginning to discover, and while she knows it's dangerous to ask questions, she is determined to find this golden-haired hellion - even if it means getting Disappeared.

And when Dance finds her, the golden-haired hellion had better look out.

Read all Fleur Beale's bestselling novels!

About the Author

Fleur Beale is the author of many award-winning books for children and young adults - more than 40 books published in New Zealand, the United States and England. She is the only writer to have twice won the Storylines Gaelyn Gordon Award for a Much-Loved Book- with Slide the Corner in 2007 and I Am Not Esther in 2009. She won the Esther Glen Award for distinguished contribution to children's literature for Juno of Taris in the 2009 LIANZA Children's Book Awards. Fierce September won the YA category in the 2011 NZ Post Children's Book Awards and the LIANZA Young Adult Award in 2011. In 2012 she won the Margaret Mahy Medal for her outstanding contribution to children's writing and in 2015 she was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit. A former high-school teacher, she lives in Wellington.