Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy

Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy is a 2014 YA novel by Australian author Karen Foxlee, with illustrations by Yoko Tanaka. A retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, the novel follows 11-year-old Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard as she attempts to rescue a boy trapped in a museum from its sinister curator Miss Kaminski. Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy was hailed as a “well-wrought, poignant and original reworking” of Andersen’s tale by Kirkus Reviews. Foxlee has won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the Best Debut Novel in the South-East Asia and Pacific region for her adult novel The Anatomy of Wings.

The novel begins with a prologue set in the ancient past. A cold-hearted and manipulative queen persuades her husband to imprison his loyal companion, the “Marvelous Boy.”

Centuries pass. A few days before Christmas, Ophelia and her sister Alice arrive in an eerie northern European city where it never stops snowing. Their father Mr. Whittard is a world-renowned expert on swords, and he has taken on the project of organizing an exhibition in the city’s vast, cold museum: “Battle: The Greatest Exhibition of Swords in the History of the World.”



The Whittards meet the museum’s curator, Miss Kaminski. A beautiful, blonde woman in an immaculate white outfit, Miss Kaminski is cold and rude to Ophelia, but Alice is entranced by her beauty and elegance.

We learn that Mr Whittard’s motive for accepting this temporary job is to give his daughters—and himself—a change of scenery. His wife—the girls’ mother—has recently died.

Ophelia misses her mother terribly, but she is a staunch rationalist and she believes that her mother is gone forever. Nevertheless, it nags at her that her mother, a fantasy writer, “had believed in almost everything, . . . in vampires with satin cloaks and shape-shifters that slid through keyholes. She believed in the ghosts of children who terrorized schools and strange creatures who sucked the thoughts from their victims’ brains. She loved crumbling castles and dark towers and secret doors.”



Knowing no one in the cold city, and with nothing else to do, Ophelia explores the vast museum. One day she stumbles upon a tiny, drab room. A peeling mural on the wall depicts a boy with a sword. It is captioned, “The Marvelous Boy.” The mural conceals a small door. Ophelia peers through the keyhole and discovers an eye peering back at her.

The eye belongs to a boy, who explains that centuries ago he was sent from another world to vanquish the Snow Queen—but he failed, and the Queen imprisoned him. The wizards who prepared him to defeat the Queen placed him under two spells. The first took his name from him, so it couldn’t be used to enchant him. The second extended his life. This spell is due to wear off. When it does, the Queen will kill him. He needs Ophelia’s help. If she can find his sword, and the key to his prison, he can still defeat the Queen.

Ophelia is sceptical about magic: “The trouble with magic was that it was messy and dangerous and filled with longing. There were too many moments that made your heart stop and ache and start again.” However, she agrees to help the boy, and sets out to find the key and the sword under the noses of Miss Kaminski and the museum’s guards. On the way she encounters giant wolves and the Misery Birds. She also meets the ghosts who have been kidnapped by the Snow Queen: killed in the Queen’s soul-extracting machine, their strength has kept the Queen young and beautiful. Ophelia also begins to hear her mother’s voice, encouraging her. At first, she doesn’t believe that it is really her mother.



Meanwhile, Alice has fallen under Miss Kaminski’s spell. She wears clothes that Miss Kaminski has given her and adopts her mannerisms and mode of speech.

Ophelia discovers that Miss Kaminski is the Snow Queen. Even worse, she is grooming Alice to be the next victim of the soul-extracting machine.

Ophelia finds the key to release the Marvelous Boy, but he is as faded as his mural and in danger of disappearing. The Snow Queen ambushes them and takes the boy outside to die. Ophelia rescues him, and the two are chased by wolves. With the boy’s help, Ophelia finds his magic sword. Ophelia, the boy, and Mr. Whittard confront the Snow Queen. At a pivotal moment in the battle, Ophelia hears her mother’s voice tell her that “Love is on your side.” Emboldened, she defeats the Snow Queen.



The boy is released to return to his homeland. The Whittards return home, slightly more reconciled to the loss of the girls’ mother. Ophelia has learned to trust her feelings and her instincts as well as rational thinking and common sense.