It'll require turning you into a millipede, but I think I can manage it

My day started with a wake and ended with a Halloween party and at this point I have been awake for essentially three days (I do not count five hours of non-consecutive sleep, especially when at least one of them occurred in a car on the way to Cape Cod), so this is not really a post. It is a recommendation for Ursula Vernon's Castle Hangnail (2015), which I read in the car on the way back from Cape Cod: it was my present from schreibergasse and is recognizably the work of the genius who brought us Digger, "Squashbat," and "Balthazar Disdains the Lemon" while reminding me more of Diana Wynne Jones than anything since Charmed Life (1977) and The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988). I can't decide if one of the protagonist's spells is a nod to Lloyd Alexander or a case of plausible parallel evolution. The prose is breezy and funny and perceptive, with informative facts about the natural world on the side. The black-and-white illustrations by the author interact well with the text; I'd be interested to know if Vernon has done any art for the characters outside of the book. The emotional hits are real. I like the minions of Castle Hangnail and I like the twelve-year-old girl with steel-toed boots and a vulture pendant who comes to take charge of the masterless castle before it's decommissioned by the Board of Magic; I too would like to know more about Mad King Harold, who thought he was a cuttlefish and declared war on the clouds. Right now, I'm going to bed.