With magic and a bit of danger, and touching on themes of family, loss, friendship, misunderstandings, kindness, and second...
Stanley’s fantasy offers an enticing blend of suspense, an ancient curse, a lonely girl, a hint of romance, and a fairy-tale trope.
When Joplin’s estranged grandfather, a famous yet reclusive author, dies, her mother insists she take something of his to remember him by. Joplin chooses a broken, centuries-old delftware platter. Once mended and hanging on her wall, the lonely 11-year-old white girl, friendless and bullied at school, admires the painted girl in the platter’s center and wishes for a friend. The next morning, the Dutch girl from the platter is sitting in the garden! Sofie is cursed, forced to grant any wishes made by the platter’s owner. With the help of a new friend, fellow lunchtime-hider-in-the-library Barrett, a white boy who, like Joplin, has “just the right amount of geekiness,” Joplin attempts to free Sofie. After Sofie’s kidnapping by the centuries-old, menacing alchemist who placed the curse, the kids devise a plan, with some adult help, to reverse the curse. First-person narrator Joplin is a likable, sensitive girl whose middle school travails will ring true with readers. The story of how the platter came to Joplin’s grandfather nicely connects Sofie and Joplin’s mother. An afterword revealing the book’s connections to the author is moving.
With magic and a bit of danger, and touching on themes of family, loss, friendship, misunderstandings, kindness, and second chances, Joplin and Sofie’s story is not soon forgotten. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-242370-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
A deceptively simple, tender tale in which respect, resilience, and hope triumph.
Generations of human and animal families grow and change, seen from the point of view of the red oak Wishing Tree that shelters them all.
Most trees are introverts at heart. So says Red, who is over 200 years old and should know. Not to mention that they have complicated relationships with humans. But this tree also has perspective on its animal friends and people who live within its purview—not just witnessing, but ultimately telling the tales of young people coming to this country alone or with family. An Irish woman named Maeve is the first, and a young 10-year-old Muslim girl named Samar is the most recent. Red becomes the repository for generations of wishes; this includes both observing Samar’s longing wish and sporting the hurtful word that another young person carves into their bark as a protest to Samar’s family’s presence. (Red is monoecious, they explain, with both male and female flowers.) Newbery medalist Applegate succeeds at interweaving an immigrant story with an animated natural world and having it all make sense. As Red observes, animals compete for resources just as humans do, and nature is not always pretty or fair or kind. This swiftly moving yet contemplative read is great for early middle grade, reluctant or tentative readers, or precocious younger students.
A deceptively simple, tender tale in which respect, resilience, and hope triumph. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-04322-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.
In Florence’s middle-grade fantasy novel, a young girl’s heart is tested in the face of an evil, spreading Darkness.
Eleven-year-old Lydia, “freckle-cheeked and round-eyed, with hair the color of pine bark and fair skin,” is struggling with the knowledge that she has reached the age to apprentice as an herbalist. Lydia is reluctant to leave her beloved, magical Mulberry Glen and her cozy Housetree in the woods—she’ll miss Garder, the Glen’s respected philosopher; her fairy guardian Pit; her human friend Livy; and even the mischievous part-elf, part-imp, part-human twins Zale and Zamilla. But the twins go missing after hearing of a soul-sapping Darkness that has swallowed a forest and is creeping into minds and engulfing entire towns. They have secretly left to find a rare fruit that, it is said, will stop the Darkness if thrown into the heart of the mountain that rises out of the lethal forest. Lydia follows, determined to find the twins before they, too, fall victim to the Darkness. During her journey, accompanied by new friends, she gradually realizes that she herself has a dangerous role to play in the quest to stop the Darkness. In this well-crafted fantasy, Florence skillfully equates the physical manifestation of Darkness with the feelings of insecurity and powerlessness that Lydia first struggles with when thinking of leaving the Glen. Such negative thoughts grow more intrusive the closer she and her friends come to the Darkness—and to Lydia’s ultimate, powerfully rendered test of character, which leads to a satisfyingly realistic, not quite happily-ever-after ending. Highlights include a delightfully haunting, reality-shifting library and a deft sprinkling of Latin throughout the text; Pit’s pet name for Lydia is mea flosculus (“my little flower”). Fine-lined ink drawings introducing each chapter add a pleasing visual element to this well-grounded fairy tale.
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781956393095
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Waxwing Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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