A laudable, quick-witted, and savvy tween hero distinguishes this entertaining ghost story.
A girl with disabilities may be the only one who can save her school from a demon in Rose’s supernatural middle-grade novel.
Vera Warden wants to make the best impression on her first day at Morton Academy of Technology in New York. Attending the private school on a scholarship sets the 12-year-old apart from most of her peers, who come from wealthy families. But she’s also seen as different due to her disabilities: Craniofacial difference has given her an asymmetrical face, and she relies on a wheelchair as a result of her osteogenesis imperfecta type 1. While bullies can be cruel, Vera is more worried about the strange entity she spots on campus. She’s seen ghosts before, but she’s convinced this “inky” figure is, in fact, a demon. This diabolical being offers certain students, including Vera, “perfect” looks and perfect lives in exchange for their faces as part of its plan to escape its realm and enter the real world. Sadly, not everyone rejects its offer as Vera does, and she resolves to stop the fiendish plan before it’s too late. The author’s adolescent hero is nothing short of marvelous: She’s charming, accomplished, and funny (“Wasn’t being afraid of the dark enough? But no. Now I had to be scared of demons”). Some of Vera’s dilemmas are specific to her disabilities (such as a callously unaccommodating teacher); she also encounters the kinds of difficulties that all kids face, like realizing her popular new friend may be a bully to others. These relatable troubles persist even as horror seeps into the narrative, as the demon’s offer stirs up anxiety about so-called beauty standards. Some genuinely unnerving (albeit family-friendly) spooks include the demon’s shadowy, shapeless appearance and a scene of Vera creeping into a pitch-black, cobweb-laden room. This breezy thriller launches a prospective series that, with Vera at the helm, shows a lot of promise.
A laudable, quick-witted, and savvy tween hero distinguishes this entertaining ghost story.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780996602525
Page Count: 175
Publisher: Pleadine Books
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2023
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
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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