An enjoyable teen fantasy involving a school for telepathy.
A debut YA novel tells the story of a boarding school with a strange secret.
High school freshman Autumn Mattison is surprised to gain acceptance to the elite Dickensen Academy, a boarding school focused on the creative arts in a remote area of the Cascade Mountains. (It’s so remote her cellphone doesn’t have reception.) Autumn writes fiction and has a small internet following, but she never thought she could make it into such a competitive school. She’s excited to finally give her work more attention—and to get out from under the thumb of her controlling father, who wants her to become a doctor. Dickensen seems like a dream. She quickly makes friends, including her roommate, Aditi Singh, and the handsome Ben, whom Autumn takes a particular liking to. But there are undeniably strange aspects of the school. Right before accepting, Autumn had a preternatural dream about walking around campus—one that accurately showed her things that she hadn’t yet seen. It turns out other students had similar dreams that helped convince them to attend the school. In addition, the upperclassmen are oddly exclusive when it comes to freshmen, who are barred from certain areas of campus. Autumn overhears a group of sophomores discussing being sent “outside the fence”—a phrase she assumes refers to the electrical fence that rings the school’s grounds—though she isn’t sure what it means. Then comes an assembly where the principal reveals why these particular students were accepted to the school: for their ability to receive dreams created by an outside party. “You are our next class of dream-makers,” Principal Locke tells them. Will life at boarding school be complicated by 200 teenagers being taught telepathy? Autumn and her friends are about to find out. Grabowski writes in an engaging prose that summons Autumn’s excitement and anxiety while also deftly building the tensions surrounding the school’s mysteries: “After dinner I tried to call home, but the phone lines were down. The internet too….A sophomore informed me it was a frequent occurrence. Dickensen’s official position stated powerful gusts of wind coming through the mountain range caused unreliable service.” Autumn and her fellow students are well-developed and likable, and their interpersonal dynamics drive the plot in a way that feels effortless. The fantasy aspect of the novel is more muted than in other similarly premised works, which will likely please some readers and disappoint others. The major reveal of the school’s true purpose comes earlier than readers will expect, and it removes a lot of the mystery from the rest of the story. Even so, the dream-making process—and Autumn’s successes and failures with it—provides a surprisingly apt metaphor for the concerns and desires of a teen. Rather than skating on the otherworldliness of the premise, Grabowski digs toward some relatable truths that her young readers will likely appreciate. She also avoids some of the more predictable tropes of the genre. Whether it’s a stand-alone or the first installment of a series, the book manages to satisfy and succeed.
An enjoyable teen fantasy involving a school for telepathy.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5092-2123-3
Page Count: 348
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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