A free-wheeling jaunt that merges fact with fiction in hopes of finding greater truths.
Stories don’t always end the way we’d hope.
That’s the conclusion reached by 12-year-old Claire Jacobus, who is just trying to find out what really happened to the mother who disappeared from her life when she was 4. Meanwhile, her playful dad only spins more and more fanciful tales about what might have transpired, to the delight of her 8-year-old brother, Patrick. And when their father suddenly decides they’ll leave their house in favor of a van with sleeping hammocks, he insists they are not homeless, per se, but instead off on a “Grand Adventure” akin to those memorialized on Instagram as #vanlife. The family eventually goes in search of the mother despite Claire’s knowledge of divorce papers and the emotional risk involved. Even filtered through Claire’s third-person perspective, Lang deftly shows how endearing Dad is despite his faults, and readers will enjoy the embedded story of ancestor Wrong Way Jacobus and his inedible baguettes. Conclusion: We may not always get to choose our circumstances, but we sometimes get to choose the narrative lens through which we see our world. The family presents as white.
A free-wheeling jaunt that merges fact with fiction in hopes of finding greater truths. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3693-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
An enthralling fantasy debut exploring exploitation by those in power.
Will 12-year-old Nura be able to outsmart the trickster jinn and save herself and her friends?
Nura lives in the fictional Pakistani town of Meerabagh, where she has worked mining mica to help support her family of five—her mother, herself, and her three younger siblings—since her father’s death. In the mines she has the company of her best friend, Faisal, who is teased by other kids for his stutter, and she enjoys small pleasures like splurging on gulab jamun. Although Maa wants Nura to stop working and attend school, she has no interest in classroom learning and hopes to save up to send her younger siblings to school instead so they can break the family’s cycle of poverty. Following a mining accident in which Faisal and others are lost in the rubble, Nura goes to the rescue. In her quest, she is plunged into the magical, glittering jinn realm, where nothing is as it seems. The author seamlessly weaves into the worldbuilding of the story commentary on real-life problems such as the ravages of child labor and systems that perpetuate inequities. An informative author’s note further explores present-day global cycles of oppression as well as the life-changing power of education. This action-packed story set in a Muslim community moves at a fast pace, with evocative writing that brings the fantasy world to life and lyrical imagery to describe emotions.
An enthralling fantasy debut exploring exploitation by those in power. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5795-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Sweetly magical.
Seven-year-old Grace knows a great many words, but she can’t bring herself to string them together on paper.
In her eyes, this gift is unique to her writer aunt, Lily, with whom she spends her afternoons. Lily, however, has found herself bereft of ideas, and out of desperation she puts out an ad for a writing assistant. Enter Rex: a dog whose apparent oddities cleverly conceal a magic that, while unexplained, is quietly remarkable. Rex inspires Lily almost immediately, and the two find happiness in their new partnership. Similarly, Rex inspires Grace to turn her words into stories. Her reservations will feel familiar to any fledgling pen-pusher: not knowing how to write what she feels, how to start, or how to press on. Those reservations extend into her everyday life, as it fills and changes in ways she never foresaw, but her small network—loving (if busy and often absent) parents, the wondrous Rex, Lily and her writing group, the encouraging teacher Ms. Luce, and steadfast, unflappable Daniel, Grace’s best friend—remains by her side throughout her writer’s journey. MacLachlan spins from simple words an enigmatic, gentle, but perhaps too succinct tale. While Grace’s first-person narration doesn’t quite ring true to her young age, (a lack of contractions makes the prose oddly formal), charmingly scratchy pencil sketches scattered throughout mitigate this alienating effect. The only physical descriptions to be found are attached to the animal characters.
Sweetly magical. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-294098-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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