Starts as a fairy-tale retelling but goes somewhere cleverly original once in the enchanted wood.
To survive her curse and those who’d punish her for her affliction, a 12-year-old seeks answers in a magical wood while accompanied by her cat.
Fable adores her large family, but her mere existence is dangerous to them. Since infancy, she’s been cursed with a blight that comes from the corrupted Mirrorwood. Each blight is different, but Fable’s is horrible: Rather than having a face of her own, she can only steal the face and, along with it, the good health, of someone she touches. Every few days, just to stay alive, Fable must harm someone in her family. And on top of that, her life is constantly in danger from the blighthunters, who seek out the blighted and kill them. Faced with such a hunter, Fable flees with her cat, Moth, into the Mirrorwood, where the godlike Subtle Powers grant her a quest that might offer a cure. In this magical forest she encounters villagers stuck in eerie, seemingly joyful time loops and others whose blights are more grotesque or dangerous than her own. The mashup of fairy-tale tropes and children’s literature references gets unexpectedly dark, but clear coming-of-age arcs (and adventures with “a fox girl, a winged scholar, and a demon prince”) keep the text accessible. Fable and her family read as White; other characters sport a wide variety of skin tones and hair colors. The world features both different-sex and same-sex couples, and Fable has a nonbinary sibling.
Starts as a fairy-tale retelling but goes somewhere cleverly original once in the enchanted wood. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-9714-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...
The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
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