Spellbinding.
Twelve-year-olds Alec and Josie communicate with each other in the same house—100 years apart.
In 1915, Josie’s emotionally abusive mother, Lavinia, a former actress, is a well-known spiritualist, operating from their newly built home in small Edwardstown, New York, where Josie and her 6-year-old sister, Cassie, are schooled by a tutor. Alec moves into the house with his mother in 2015, after his parents’ separation. When he and new friends Danny and Harold discover a “talking board” in a drawer, they are astonished when the glass planchette begins to move: “W-E A-R-E Y-O-U-N-G L-A-D-I-E-S.” An old photographic portrait of a girl labeled “Josephine Clifford, 1915,” and the words “HELLO ALEC” carved into the attic windowsill confirm for Alec the presence of something unexplained. The connection between the children is carefully constructed and revealed, sometimes running along similar paths in their respective Novembers (1915 and 2015) and sometimes diverging. A packet of letters, hidden for a century for Alec to discover, and visits by Alec and Danny to the local library and historical archives add to the rich storyline. Lavinia’s discovery of Josie’s friendship is sinister and frightening, amping the tension, but Alec’s research allows him to reassure Josie and readers that she and Cassie will escape—and find their own futures. The book assumes a white default.
Spellbinding. (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-944995-61-4
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Amberjack Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map.
A girl who delights in the macabre harnesses her inherited supernatural ability.
It’s not just her stark white hair that makes 11-year-old Zee Puckett stand out in nowheresville Knobb’s Ferry. She’s a storyteller, a Mary Shelley fangirl, and is being raised by her 21-year-old high school dropout sister while their father looks for work upstate (cue the wayward glances from the affluent demography). Don’t pity her, because Zee doesn’t acquiesce to snobbery, bullying, or pretty much anything that confronts her. But a dog with bleeding eyes in a cemetery gives her pause—momentarily—because the beast is just the tip of the wicked that has this way come to town. Time to get some help from ghosts. The creepy supernatural current continues throughout, intermingled with very real forays into bullying (Zee won’t stand for it or for the notion that good girls need to act nice), body positivity, socio-economic status and social hierarchy, and mental health. This debut from a promising writer involves a navigation of caste systems, self-esteem, and villainy that exists in an interesting world with intriguing characters, but they receive a flat, two-dimensional treatment that ultimately makes the book feel like one is learning a ho-hum lesson in morality. Zee is presumably White (as is her rich-girl nemesis–cum-comrade, Nellie). Her best friend, Elijah, is cued as Black. Warning: this just might spur frenzied requests for Frankenstein.
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map. (Supernatural. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304460-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A tween gets in over his head in this introspective and nostalgic story.
Thirteen-year-old Joey Goodman spends every August in Atlantic City, New Jersey, at his grandparents’ hotel.
It’s 1975, and the city is soon to become a gambling resort as old hotels are replaced with casinos. Joey’s passion is playing Skee-Ball at the boardwalk arcades. There, he attracts the attention of shady Artie Bishop, known as the king of Steel Pier, and becomes involved in Bishop’s unspecified criminal activities. Suave Artie engages Joey in conversation about the boy’s favorite book, The Once and Future King, and Joey begins to regard him almost as a new King Arthur. Artie offers him a job chaperoning his daughter, Melanie, when she comes to visit. After Joey finishes his unpaid waiter’s shift at the hotel restaurant each day, he lies to his family, meets Melanie, and they explore the piers’ seedy amusements. Joey falls for 15-year-old Melanie, and she regards him fondly but is attracted to his older brother Reuben. The close-knit Jewish family of four bickering brothers, parents, uncle, and grandparents (especially wise grandpa Zeyde) is lovingly portrayed. The descriptions of Joey’s ponderings about God (he’s had his bar mitzvah but is undecided) and Artie’s business dealings may not hold young readers’ interest, and the immersive setting could appeal more to adults old enough to remember the time and place. All characters are presumed White.
A tween gets in over his head in this introspective and nostalgic story. (author’s note) (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72843-034-8
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Kar-Ben
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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