A slowly unfolding read for bug lovers and environmentalists.
Can Eden find a way to stop insect-hating August from killing all the bugs?
In this debut by the writer and director of Black-ish and other hit TV shows, 9-year-old August, a White boy who is the victim of bullying, hates insects: A cockroach climbs up his arm during a school play, a fly lands in his mouth and he vomits on his favorite teacher, and a spiderweb causes him to drop a box of his mother’s homemade jelly. August schemes to get his hands on a pesticide that is rumored to be exceptionally toxic—only its inventor is missing. On her 10th birthday, Eden, who has a White Jewish mother and Black father and comes from a musical family, learns she can talk to wasps using her kazoo. She saves a paper wasps’ nest from a group of destructive children, and, taken by her kindness, the wasp queen informs her of a mysterious school dedicated to teaching communication between insects and humans. Eden finds a card in a library book for the Institute for Lower Learning: Could it be the right school? Eden’s and August’s quests intersect at the institute. Though the prose is beautiful, the novel creeps along, with extensive passages of narration that are not broken up with dialogue. Despite the protagonists’ young ages, older middle-grade readers may be drawn to the strong messages about environmentalism, friendship, and self-discovery.
A slowly unfolding read for bug lovers and environmentalists. (Morse code and semaphore charts) (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-40785-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
Thought-provoking and full of heart; a genuinely pleasurable read.
Before he ages out of seeing Holy Beings, Nathan must find water monster Dew a mentor.
A couple of years after the events of Healer of the Water Monster (2021), Nathan’s life in Phoenix, Arizona, is changing—he and his mother, Janet, are moving in with Janet’s boyfriend and his son, the book’s co-protagonist, Edward. More than that, Nathan’s going through puberty and knows his time with Dew is limited—her new guardian will be Edward. But to ensure that Dew learns the water monster songs, she needs a mentor. Nathan wants it to be powerful water monster Yitoo Bi’aanii, who eagerly returns to the Fourth World. Upon seeing how her river has dwindled, Yitoo declares that an Enemy is stealing the water. The quest to thwart the Enemy is quickly complicated as the stakes rise and the heroes face conflicting loyalties. The environmentalist narrative embraces nuance and complications, avoiding easy answers without undermining the possibility of a hopeful future. Edward, newly informed of his Diné family’s brutal relocation era story, also struggles with inherited trauma, while Yitoo, who was witness to the violence, carries the atrocities with her. Additionally, Edward grapples with the fact that his late mother was White and with being the only household member who is not fully Diné. The bittersweet ending is as beautiful as the prose describing the fantastical journey to get there.
Thought-provoking and full of heart; a genuinely pleasurable read. (author’s note, glossary, note from Cynthia Leitich Smith) (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9780062990433
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Heartdrum
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
An entertaining continuation to a magical series that celebrates diversity with a magical twist.
With Rumpelstiltskin and his band of villains still on the loose, the students and staff of Fairy Tale Reform School are on high alert as they prepare for the next attack.
Classes are devoted to teaching battle techniques and conjuring new weapons, which narrator Gilly finds preferable to learning history or manners. But Maxine, her ogress friend, has had it with all the doom and gloom. The last straw is when the agenda at the Royal Lady-in-Waiting meeting is changed from “How to Plan the Perfect Fairy Garden Party” to designing flying rocks and creating flower darts. While on a class field trip to the village to investigate their future careers, Maxine finds a magic lamp housing a genie named Darlene. Her wish that everyone be happy works a little too well. War preparations are put on hold as the school fills with flowers, laughter, and plans for a musical production. But when Gilly is tapped to fill in for the local chief of the dwarf police, things really take a turn for the worse. The students, including fairies, ogres, and the part-human/part-beast offspring of Beauty and the ex-Beast, focus on friendship and supporting one another in spite of their differences. Humility, forgiveness, and loyalty are also highly regarded in the FTRS community. Human Gilly is white, but there is racial as well as species diversity at FTRS.
An entertaining continuation to a magical series that celebrates diversity with a magical twist. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-5167-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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