Despite some missteps, an enjoyable tale for budding engineers and fans of reality-based fantasies.
A girl’s backyard investigation reveals tiny, magical visitors in need of her help.
In this middle-grade fantasy, rooted in a seventh grader’s everyday life, 12-year-old Roxanne “Roxy” Maxwell is intrigued when coins lost in her backyard reappear on her doorstep. She and her electrical engineer father craft a trap to find out what sort of animal could have done such a thing. The culprits: a pair of 4-inch-tall, green, pointy-eared sprites. Roxy and her friend Dexie Chappell figure out how to communicate with the two strangers (again with Dad’s electrical engineer help), and learn that they are Niffits whose duty is to “find things and return them.” A traveling mishap has left the two far from their home in “Nihon koku—Japan,” and they are desperate to return before the female Niffit gives birth. Roxy, Dexie, neighbor Dean Walker, and Roxy’s parents come up with a solution: a specially designed toy plane to get the Niffits past the Transportation Security Administration screening and onto a jet to Japan. Unfortunately, the book’s fantasy elements will disappoint many readers. Little content, other than the Niffits’ names (Akira and Masako), establishes Japan as their country of origin. The trip to Japan is dismissed with a short visit to a generic park and a departure from the country on the same day. (The abrupt conclusion appears to suggest a sequel in the making.) Averill’s detailed descriptions of how the backyard traps, communication device, and aerodynamic paper plane are built, experimented with, and revised are more intriguing. Relationships, too, are a strength: Roxy and Dexie learn that pesky fifth grader Dean is actually smart and kind. Roxy’s parents are warm and loving; Dexie’s are too strict; and Dean’s are caring but overworked. (One unpleasant and unnecessary element: To swear Dean to secrecy about the Niffits, Dexie, whose father is a banker, threatens to have his parents’ finances examined.) The engaging story is interspersed with expressive, uncredited, full-page digital illustrations that have the look of colored pencil and watercolor. These depict Roxy, her father, and Dexie, who are White; Dean, who is a Black student; and the green-skinned Niffits clad in leaves and grass.
Despite some missteps, an enjoyable tale for budding engineers and fans of reality-based fantasies.Pub Date: March 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-958004-01-2
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Ink Start Media
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An engaging, puzzle-centered page-turner.
A tween enters into a high-stakes and high-rewards hunt for a life-changing treasure.
After years of financial instability, and moving from place to place with her mother, Everly “Benny” Benedict, 12, is poised to come into a large inheritance from her great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, Evelyn “Sparrow” Terry of Greenport, Long Island—but only if Benny can solve Evelyn’s riddles and find a mysterious island within the deadline, less than two weeks away. If she fails, Benny will lose the entire estate. As the pressure mounts, Benny and her newly acquired Greenport friends, Zara and Ryan, unravel clues tied to a rare Blood Orange Moon, a deadly 1825 Yellow Fever epidemic, and family connections spanning generations; in addition, events from Evelyn’s timeline shed light on the present day. Incorporating text messages, the young detectives’ notes, and 19th-century newspaper articles, journal entries, and letters, Calonita deftly transitions between the past and the present. Greenport is rich in magical elements that gradually play a larger and larger role in the plot, setting this book apart from other inheritance treasure-hunt stories and creating an added layer of interest. Severe weather phenomena and other challenges contribute to the building tension. The worldbuilding contains several unexplained developments, and the book ends on a frustratingly major cliffhanger, but this series opener is clearly setting up for a sequel in which more answers will hopefully be forthcoming. Main characters are cued white.
An engaging, puzzle-centered page-turner. (Fantasy adventure. 8-12)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781728277035
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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