Readers will be charmed and educated by this lovely historical novel.
This middle-grade adventure features a teen whose destiny connects 17th-century France with Scotland.
Thirteen-year-old Mercy Laroche left London by carriage a month ago. It’s 1694, and she travels the dangerous Scottish Highlands to locate Kingsnot Silver. Mercy is an orphan and French native who participates in the Auld Alliance, whereby Scotland and France exchange learned young girls with messages as a bond that unites them against England, should that nation ever attack either neighbor. But near Loch Eirahn, the carriage crashes. Mercy wakes and finds no sign of her driver or her chaperone, Mr. Willicks. Thankfully, a lad about her age steps from the wilderness. This is Calum MacDonald, who offers to help Mercy proceed on her journey. He brings her to Red Rob MacGregor, the local clan leader. While MacGregor hasn’t heard of Silver, he believes that a famous seannachie (storyteller) named Henderson may have. Yet Henderson lives in Glencoe, the site of a massacre by redcoats who killed Calum’s family. The lad has vowed never to return, which is why he’s chosen life in the Highlands with an adopted clan. Mercy, who has a club foot and is supremely knowledgeable in herb lore, must find Silver before the Auld Alliance deadline expires in less than two months. In this sequel, Macreery crafts a sweet historical fiction tale that emphasizes loyalty and perseverance for middle-grade audiences. Mercy readily finds feverfew flowers to ease Calum’s headache. And she easily disproves his assumption that she’s useless in the wilderness (“city born and city lived”). Throughout, the pair’s light bickering contributes to a romance that the author stokes gently, as Calum consistently proves himself the white knight to Mercy (“Exhausted, bleeding...and definitely in pain,” he “handed the canteen to me first”). Scotland’s beauty is noted in lines like “The early rays of the sun danced along the water’s surface making the entire loch glisten like a beautiful jewel.” At the end, Silver isn’t what Mercy expected, and readers are treated to a revelation about the famous Unicorn Tapestries. A bold final decision makes Mercy and Calum’s next trek one to follow.
Readers will be charmed and educated by this lovely historical novel.Pub Date: July 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-977228-35-2
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A powerfully candid and soulful account of an immigrant experience.
A Taiwanese family tries their luck in America.
In this verse novel, it’s 1980, and nearly 11-year-old Ai Shi and her mother prepare to leave Taipei to join her father in California, where he is pursuing a business opportunity with a friend. The extended family send them off, telling Ai Shi she’s so lucky to go to the “beautiful country”—the literal translation of the Chinese name for the U.S. Once they are reunited with Ba, he reveals that they have instead poured their savings into a restaurant in the remote Los Angeles County town of Duarte. Ma and Ba need to learn to cook American food, but at least, despite a betrayal by Ba’s friend, they have their own business. However, the American dream loses its shine as language barriers, isolation, financial stress, and racism take their toll. Ai Shi internalizes her parents’ disappointment in their new country by staying silent about bullying at school and her own unmet needs. Her letters home to her favorite cousin, Mei, maintain that all is well. After a year of enduring unrelenting challenges, including vandalism by local teens, the family reaches its breaking point. Hope belatedly arrives in the form of community allies and a change of luck. Kuo deftly touches on complex issues, such as the human cost of the history between China and Taiwan as well as the socio-economic prejudices and identity issues within Asian American communities.
A powerfully candid and soulful account of an immigrant experience. (Verse historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: June 28, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311898-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Blend epic adventure with gothic good and evil, and add a dash of sly wit for a tale that keeps readers turning the page,...
Light and darkness have never clashed with such fierce majesty and eloquent damnation.
Murdock weaves an engrossing tale set in medieval France, filled with charismatic characters, daring deeds, and more sinister duplicity than a certain serpent in the Garden of Eden. The titular Boy is thought a simpleton, a disfigured child who has lived a life of ridicule. Accepting of his sorry lot in life, the humble servant wants nothing more than to live in the shadows and avoid the ill-tempered attention of the likes of town bully Ox. That is, he accepts it until the arrival of the shadowy pilgrim, Secundus, enlarges Boy’s world beyond the small boundaries of his village and introduces him to a world filled with greed, hunger, joy, deceit, and victory. Along with a story that unravels to reveal that not everything in the world is as it appears, Murdock delivers a wickedly fun-filled quest that twists and turns with lyrical fire. Boy ponders: “Pilgrim he might be but this man has sin stitched into his soul.” The story is, among other things, an exploration of religion, Secundus’ thieving quest for relics a counterpoint to Boy’s stalwart faith.
Blend epic adventure with gothic good and evil, and add a dash of sly wit for a tale that keeps readers turning the page, shaking their heads, and feeling the power of choice. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-268620-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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