Praise for THE BLUE MIRROR:

"Psychologically gripping...Koja explores the confusion between infatuation and real love - in all its cruelty and its redemptive powers."
-- Publishers Weekly [starred review]

"A richly embroidered tale of abuse and control highlighted with shiny threads of magic and redemption."
-- Kirkus Reviews

"Long stream-of-consciousness sentences with creative (but recognizable) spelling and clever use of italics will enchant readers, while the atmospheric cover art will draw teens seeking stories about extraordinary experiences."
-- Booklist

"Mags is a plucky protagonist, and readers will appreciate the ingenuity she musters to address her problems...gritty urban scenes and rhythmic language...give the book an almost surreal ambience."
-- School Library Journal

"Maggy's voice is articulate, controlled, and self-aware...the intensity and breakneck pacing of this latest YA outing from Koja will appeal to the teen up for a literary run on the wild side."
-- Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

An ALA Best Book for Young Adults

Michigan Library Association 2005 Thumbs Up! Book Award nominee

Chicago Public Schools Recommended Reading List (11th/12th grades)

Featured in Seventeen magazine - March 2004

A Tayshas Reading List choice 2005-2006

For those who have been requesting reproductions of the cover of THE BLUE MIRROR, limited edition prints are available at CollectingDreams.com.

Excerpt from The Blue Mirror

    At the Blue Mirror it's really crowded for a weekday night; the snow, probably. I can't get the booth I want, the one right under the window, blue-tinted window almost as big as the wall, showing café and street in equal reflections, your own face ghosted on the faces outside: the real blue mirror. When you're, like, a famous artist, Casey says, I'll make them put up a placque. The Maggy Klass Memorial Booth.
    Sure. Famous.
    Hey, have a little faith in yourself, will you? I do.
    Casey's the only one who's ever seen my sketchbooks, my own personal paper world: it's called "The Blue Mirror," too. Everything I see as I sit here goes into my sketchbook, made alive again in a different way, like a fairytale I tell myself. Anything can happen in "The Blue Mirror," anything I want.
    Casey says it's amazing, the parts I've let him see, anyway. Casey's not working tonight, it's Thursday. But even without him the Blue Mirror makes me feel good, camouflaged safe in the steam and chatter, the dark strong-coffee perfume. And -- just as I'm turning away from the counter, cappuccino in hand -- like a granted wish my booth gets empty, the girls there sliding out: three girls, two princess-types in fluffy white jackets and Yo Chica jeans, and the third a sort of skwatter girl, I can't really make her out. She's grimy like a skwatter, hair in greasy, curly strings, but she's dressed kind of like a princess, spike-heeled boots that must have cost a fortune, and she's wearing this blue lipstick that I've never seen before.
    Still a trio, they step out to the sidewalk, where the skwatter girl palms something to the other two, quick and practiced, I can't see what so it's probably pills, tabs of Double-J or something. One of the princesses digs in her teeny-tiny purse, hands the skwatter money, and they separate, two left, one right, but not before I see the jangly gleam, bracelet fresh around the skwatter's wrist, she's smiling blue to herself as she skips away, really skips, like a little kid, across the jostle of the street to the corner opposite --
    -- where her friends are waiting, one a dumpy little bundle of bandanas and scarves, I can't tell if it's a boy or a girl -- but the other one, I look at him once and I can't look away. Like the most perfect picture you ever saw, a walking wish come true: Crow-black hair and loose green jacket, tall, even taller than me but when he moves it's not jerky or gawky, just pure grace, like he really belongs in his body, like it's his favorite place to be.
    And when he smiles, oh, it's sweet and secret both, like spiked candy, his lips that same strange blue, he's laughing as the skwatter girl shakes her bracelet, the girls laugh too and I'm scrabbling for my sketchbook, oh my God I have to get him, I have to catch that smile --
    -- but I can't, he moves too fast, comet quicksilver off the curb and it's like the traffic parts for him, he just, just glides across the street --
    -- and then a bus, slush and puffing exhaust and when it passes he's gone, they're gone, just the crowd that without them is suddenly empty, just me in the blue window with "The Blue Mirror" on my lapso I draw what I can, what's not there but was: three shapes, outlined in little dashes, like beings from some brighter world just skwatting on this planet, passing through to check the natives, too fast and wonderful to ever stop and stay.