SHADOW SPELL

Name: SHADOW SPELL
Author: Caro King
ISBN: 978-1-4424-2045-8

by Caro King ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2012

It is difficult to know where one is in the story or where the story is going, quite, but readers captivated by the humor or...

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A great deal of action is regularly stopped cold by explication, gory and funny parts and some delicious ideas in this confusing middle-grade fantasy, sequel to Seven Sorcerers (2011).

There is a lot to assimilate in this tale. Jibbit is a gargoyle with a good heart who is afraid of the ground. Skerridge is a rogue bogeyman. Strood of the Terrible House is busy raising an army of tiger-men out of disparate bodies and the ubiquitous crowsmorte vine. Ninevah Redstone is the plucky girl who may save this world, but not before many adventures, startling and icky brushes with torture and death and more twists and turns than might strictly speaking be necessary. Specialized vocabulary abounds: There are the Quick, the Grimm and the Fabulous (labels for, respectively, humans and two different types of nonhuman), the tombfolk and the skinkin. Words are capitalized portentously, and much dialogue is communicated in aggressive dialect that's positively festooned with apostrophes. There are more dei ex machina than can be enumerated, and go round and round, and a lot of things end up where they started, only not exactly.

It is difficult to know where one is in the story or where the story is going, quite, but readers captivated by the humor or the horror may not care, as everything is (kind of) tied up in the end. (Fantasy. 10-14)

Pub Date: May 1, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-4424-2045-8

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Aladdin

Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ACTION & ADVENTURE FICTION | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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IF WE WERE GIANTS

by Dave Matthews & Clete Barrett Smith ; illustrated by Antonio Javier Caparo ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020

Uneven pacing and clunky writing undermine this examination of trauma and PTSD.

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Matthews, of the Dave Matthews Band, and co-author Smith offer a fantasy that explores the damage done by violence inflicted by one people against another.

Ten-year-old Kirra lives in an idyllic community hidden for generations inside a dormant volcano. When she and her little brother make unwise choices that help bring the violent, spindly, gray-skinned Takers to her community—with devastating results—Kirra feels responsible and leaves the volcano. Four years later, Kirra’s been adopted into a family of Tree Folk that live in the forest canopy. Though there are many Tree Folk, individual families care for their own and are politely distant from others. Kirra, suffering from (unnamed) PTSD, evades her traumatic memories by avoiding what she calls “Memory Traps,” but when the Takers arrive in the forest, she must face her trauma and attempt to make a community of the Tree Folk if they’re to survive. Although Kirra’s struggles through trauma are presented with sympathy and realistically rendered, some characters’ choices are so patently foolish they baldly read like the plot devices they are. Additionally, much preparation goes into one line of defense while other obvious factors are completely ignored, further pushing the story’s credibility. Kirra is brown skinned, as is her first family; Tree Folk appear not to be racially homogenous; and the Takers are all gray skinned.

Uneven pacing and clunky writing undermine this examination of trauma and PTSD. (Fantasy. 10-14)

Pub Date: March 3, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-4847-7871-5

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion

Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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RIGHT BACK AT YOU

by Carolyn Mackler ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 4, 2025

An absorbing introduction to the paradoxes and possibilities of time travel.

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Two misfit 12-year-olds find friendship via a wormhole.

It’s 2023, and Mason is having a rough time at school and at home, so his parents send him to a therapist. She suggests that he write a letter about his problems to “anybody or nobody.” Although Mason decides to write to Albert Einstein, a quirk of spacetime causes the letter he’s hidden in his closet to instead find its way to a girl named Talia, who’s living in western Pennsylvania in 1987. It takes a while for both kids to believe they’re not the victims of some elaborate prank, but they become close friends and confidants through typical tweenage struggles—separated parents, sibling friction, bullying, and antisemitism from peers. (Talia refers to herself as “half-Jewish,” and while white-presenting Mason isn’t Jewish, as a New Yorker he has Jewish friends and classmates.) Both children in this epistolary novel put an unrealistic amount of detail into their letters, and at many points their voices sound awkwardly adult, especially when they’re discussing Talia’s experience of anti-Jewish bigotry. Readers will quickly become invested in Mason’s and Talia’s lives, however, and the mystery of how, and why, they’re connected is satisfying enough to keep the story moving forward. Readers aware of recent controversies surrounding Alice Walker may be surprised to see her cited positively in a book that addresses the scourge of antisemitism.

An absorbing introduction to the paradoxes and possibilities of time travel. (Fiction. 10-14)