Names
What's in a name? In Alanna, names are like a portal into how this world works. They can tell us about who you are or what you can do. Even the absence of a name can be powerful, as with the Namele...
Clothing
Clothes make the man, right? We don't see Alanna in a dress, like, for the whole book, so there's something to that in her case.When Alanna first arrives at the palace and is totally freaked out th...
Healing
For a book about knights and swords and stuff, there's an awful lot of healing going on. (Okay, maybe that's not so surprising.) Some of this healing is essential to the plot, such as when Alanna b...
Old Cities
Old stuff is cool, especially if you're a hipster who was into it before it was cool. Like Hipster Kitty. In this book, we get glimpses of two old cities that are both different from each other and...
Swords
This being a book about knights, we figured swords would get mentioned somewhere. And we were right! As in, mentioned on practically everywhere. In page school, swords are a pretty big deal. Alanna...