Part 1, Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Snowfall”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion and depictions of mental illness, child abuse, neglect, and divorce.
Hazel Anderson lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her mother. After her parents’ divorce, she transfers to Lovelace Elementary for financial reasons. At her old school, Hazel didn’t have to sit at a desk, and she was allowed to address her teachers by their first names—a very different atmosphere to Lovelace. The only thing that the fifth grader likes about her new school is that her next-door neighbor and best friend, Jack Campbell, is also a student there.
One winter morning, Hazel misses the bus because she is admiring the snow and playing with Jack. Her mother drops her off at school and entreats her to be more practical and to try and befriend other girls. Hazel’s teacher, the cranky Mrs. Jacobs, disapproves of the imaginative girl because she is frequently tardy and daydreams during class. Hazel longs for the days when her teachers appreciated her creativity. Her troubles at school are compounded by the bullying and exclusion she faces from her classmates. Hazel feels like an outsider among her peers because her white parents adopted her from India when she was a baby. She wishes that she had a connection to her Indian cultural heritage.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Fairy Tales”
Jack moved next door to Hazel when they were six years old, and they quickly became best friends because he’s “the only person she [knows] with an imagination” (20). Jack loves drawing and baseball and dreams of becoming both a professional athlete and a comic book artist when he grows up. Jack and Hazel’s peers find it odd that a boy and a girl are best friends and ask if they are dating, a suggestion Hazel finds absurd. During recess, Jack and Hazel play a game called superhero baseball in which they pretend to be superheroes who must contain their powers while playing an ordinary game of baseball.
Jack wants to go sledding with Hazel after school so that he can delay going home. However, Hazel’s mother arranges a playdate for her with an old acquaintance, Adelaide Briggs, whom she has not seen in two years. At the Briggses’ opulent lakeside home, Hazel meets Adelaide’s uncle Martin, who is a screenwriter. With Martin’s encouragement, the two girls improvise a story about a villainous Snow Queen who tricks children into staying with her and “puts them in snow globes” (33). Although Hazel has a good time with Adelaide, she feels guilty for leaving Jack alone when she returns home and sees his dark and gloomy house.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Spaces”
Eighteen inches of snow fall overnight, so school is canceled. When Hazel goes to the Campbells’ house, Jack’s mother, who deals with depression, answers the door looking gaunt and vacant. Jack feels embarrassed and apologizes to Hazel. The children go to the shrieking shack, an “old skeleton of a house tucked away in a field near the railroad tracks” (41). The children climb up into their hiding spot in the rotting house’s attic, and Jack shows Hazel his latest sketches, including a snow fort where an invisible boy seeks refuge and an invincible supervillain who steals souls. When Hazel comes home, her mother is on the phone with her father, but he declines to speak to his daughter.
The next morning, Hazel’s mother is cross with her because she forgot to shovel the driveway. Hazel grows more upset when two boys in her class named Bobby and Tyler pick on her. At recess, she demands to know how Jack can be friends with her bullies and then tells him to go play with the boys. As the perplexed Jack walks away, Hazel throws a snowball at his back. Shortly afterward, the boy doubles over in pain, clutching his left eye.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Pieces”
Bobby and Tyler accuse Hazel of being responsible for Jack’s injury. She throws her pencil case at Tyler, rushes from the classroom, and hides in the girls’ locker room for the rest of the day. When Hazel tries to sneak onto the bus, her mother finds her and admonishes her for worrying everyone. Hazel’s mother attempts to reassure her about Jack and admits that she, like Hazel, is also struggling with the divorce. She asks her daughter to help, saying, “Part of being grown up is acting the way you’re supposed to act, even if you don’t feel like it. Can you be grown up for me?” (62).
Hazel’s mother calls Jack’s father, who tells her that Jack had a piece of glass in his eye that they had removed at the hospital, and that his son is too busy to talk to Hazel. Hazel feels convinced that the Campbells are hiding something from her. By the time Hazel arrives back home and checks on Jack, Bobby and Tyler are already there. Hazel has been thinking about the soul-stealing villain Jack drew, and she suggests that he could be thwarted by someone with the power to block other superpowers. Jack tells her to “stop being such a baby” and goes outside to play with the boys (67).
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “The Mirror”
The narrator directly addresses the reader, explaining that they will be temporarily looking away from Hazel to introduce some other important characters. After establishing that there is much more to the world than most people believe, the narrator describes a malevolent figure named Mal who is part goblin and part demon. Mal invents a magical mirror that makes beautiful things look ugly and ugly things look even worse. The mirror breaks into “a hundred million pieces,” and one of them lands in Jack’s eye. A witch with the power of traveling between snowy worlds sees this occur and observes, “This should be interesting” (71).
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “Castoffs”
The narrative returns to Hazel. Her mother commends her for making a good choice by not sledding with Jack and the boys since she left her jacket and boots at school, but the real reason Hazel doesn’t go is because she wasn’t invited. She tells herself that Jack will explain the strange changes in his behavior and apologize to her tomorrow.
The next morning, the world is coated in ice. Hazel’s mother tells her to wear her old winter gear to school, and the girl feels like a “puffy purple pauper” in the brightly colored, too-small clothes (76). At school, Hazel’s classmates make fun of her for the incident the day before. She wonders if Jack is mad at her for attacking Tyler and disrupting the delicate balance Jack preserves by being friends with both Hazel and the fifth-grade boys. She plans her apology to Jack rather than paying attention in class.
At recess, Hazel apologizes to both Jack and Tyler, but Jack responds as though he’s forgotten that they’re best friends. During the bus ride home, Hazel sits alone and listens to Jack laugh with the boys. As soon as Hazel arrives home, she bursts into tears and tells her mother that Jack is no longer speaking to her. Her mother tries to comfort her by saying that friendships sometimes change and fade away as people grow up: “If he’s a true friend, he’ll come back” (86). However, Hazel remains certain that something has happened to Jack because her best friend would never treat her so coldly.
Part 1, Chapters 1-6 Analysis
Anne Ursu lends a familiar narrative added emotional depth and relatability by combining a contemporary coming-of-age story with the genre of fairy tale retelling. The first four chapters are set in modern-day Minneapolis, Minnesota, and focus on the daily emotional realities of an 11-year-old, such as bullying from peers, difficulty adapting to a new school, and struggling with her parents’ divorce. At the same time, the author takes inspiration from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” a fairy tale about a girl named Gerda who undergoes a perilous journey to rescue her best friend, Kay. Chapter 5 departs from the previous chapters’ realism and introduces a number of magical elements and figures inspired by the fairy tale, including the enchanted mirror, the goblin-like Mal, and the witch. The events of these early chapters combine fairy-tale elements from “The Snow Queen” with the emotional realism of a modern coming-of-age story.
Mirroring the novel’s distinctive combination of realism and fairy-tale elements, Ursu examines The Intersection of Reality and Fantasy in Shaping Personal Identity. The protagonist is an imaginative girl who feels out of place in the real world. An allusion to Madeleine L’Engle’s work helps to convey how Hazel feels stifled by the conformity her teacher requires: “Hazel sometimes wondered if her teacher came from that planet at the end of A Wrinkle in Time where everyone has to be exactly the same, except Mrs. Jacobs would have been too happy there to ever leave” (13). This excerpt illustrates how Hazel uses her beloved stories to comfort herself about her outsider status and academic struggles. In another example of fantasy’s formative influence on the characters’ identities, Hazel’s friendship with Jack is rooted in their shared imagination and creative curiosity: “He was the only person who saw things for what they could be instead of just what they were” (20). At the beginning of the novel, Hazel’s attachment to fantasy causes her to feel like an outcast, making her friendship with Jack even more central to her identity and the story’s plot.
Through the specific realities of Hazel and Jack’s lives, Ursu explores The Impact of Divorce and Depression on Children. The protagonist’s parents split the summer before the story begins, and their separation carries financial, academic, and social consequences for Hazel. For example, Hazel transfers to the rigid Lovelace Elementary because her mother “didn’t have the money to send her to the school she’d gone to since kindergarten” (9). Hazel struggles with the structure of her new school, and she faces bullying and ostracization from her peers to the point that “she’d given up trying” to fit in with them (18). The sadness and loneliness that Hazel feels because of her parents’ divorce is compounded by the separation’s ripple effect on her financial and scholastic circumstances.
Jack grapples with the emotional pain of his mother’s mental health concerns by using art as a tool to cope with the problems he faces. His mother deals with depression, which Hazel’s mother describes as being “sick with sadness” (40). Jack’s drawing of the snow fort expresses a feeling of being overlooked, a longing for safety and solitude, and a desire to escape. He tells Hazel, “[I]f you’re inside, no one can ever find you there” (45). Likewise, his drawing of the soul-stealing supervillain represents depression as a malevolent force taking the boy’s mother from him. Jack voices his own hopelessness and fear when he asks, “What if no one can fight [the supervillain]?” (47). Ursu’s novel suggests that the painful emotions Jack struggles with because of his mother’s depression make him vulnerable to the witch in the next section.
Both natural and supernatural forces contribute to changes in Hazel and Jack’s relationship, developing the theme of The Evolution of Childhood Friendships. The children have been best friends since they were six, but their bond faces new pressures as they grow older. Their peers ask them, “Are you guys going out?” (23), because they do not understand why a boy and a girl would want an entirely platonic friendship at their age. Hazel’s view of herself as Jack’s protector adds additional pressure to their dynamic. Hazel chastises herself for neglecting Jack, saying, “She [is] his best friend. She [will] do better” (35). While her desire to look after Jack is considerate, it’s also limiting. For example, she feels guilty for reestablishing her friendship with Adelaide even though the girls’ bond gives the protagonist positive outlets for her creativity. As Jack and Hazel’s friendship begins to deteriorate because of the effects of the mirror shard, Hazel’s mother sees the evolution in the children’s friendship as a painful but natural process: “It’s one of the really hard things about growing up. Sometimes your friends change […] Well, sometimes when you get older you grow apart” (86). In these chapters, Hazel ignores her mother’s advice and insists that there is a supernatural explanation. To complete her character arc, she must learn to accept the changes in her and Jack’s friendship as the story continues.
Ursu utilizes symbols and motifs to add layers of meaning to the story, foreshadow upcoming events, and support the novel’s blend of fairy-tale and modern-day elements. Snow serves as a motif of the intersection of reality and fantasy due to its presence in the real world and its prominence in fairy tales, especially “The Snow Queen.” Further underscoring its importance as a motif, the witch enters the “real world” where the children live “because of the snow” (71), adding an element of suspense and danger to the blizzard in Chapter 3. At the same time, Ursu introduces symbols that offer hope against the coming threats. The Joe Mauer baseball that Jack gives to Hazel represents his heart. This foreshadows the baseball’s importance to the climax, in which Hazel uses the object to restore Jack’s memories.
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