Broad streaks of sentimentality, particularly in the pictures, but the worthy purpose shines through.
In this unusual pro bono gathering, 21 children struck by cancer are worked into elaborately staged photographs and then into matching stories created by as many Utah authors.
For his “Anything Can Be” project, photographer and collection editor Diaz costumes the young patients according to their wishes—as fairies, athletes, knights, a firefighter, a cowpoke, or less generically as a baker, “Batkid,” and a “fashionista”—and portrays them here with fulsome introductory tributes to their spirit and courage. The children display these qualities in the ensuing stories, and if the cover’s claim that most of the authors are “best-selling” is, at best, premature, there’s quality here. Shannon Hale offers a tale of a warrior princess imprisoned in a tower by goblins who shave her head so she can’t escape à la Rapunzel, and Brandon Mull gives readers a costumed young superhero redirecting a vengeful bullying victim onto the moral high road; both stories are strong and effective for all their brevity. The overall tone of earnest boosterism is twice relieved by funny stories (Tyler Whitesides’ “A Fireman Always Helps” and Bobbie Pyron’s “Sada of the High Seas”) and by Lehua Parker’s powerful “Mermaid’s Tale,” in which just walking up a staircase becomes an agonizing feat of endurance.
Broad streaks of sentimentality, particularly in the pictures, but the worthy purpose shines through. (Short stories. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62972-103-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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
A vibrant celebration of art’s power to console and heal.
Zora, 12, shares her mother’s artistic gifts, but when grief and guilt lead her to destroy years of drawings, the results are astonishing.
Voom is Zora and her mom’s word for the artistic impulse that bubbles up inside. After disclosing her leukemia diagnosis to Zora and her sister, Frankie, Mom promised the girls she’d beat it. Ten months later, their far sicker mom is hospitalized in Pittsburgh, where the girls share their bus driver grandmother’s basement apartment. Mom continues to be optimistic and avoid acknowledging the possibility of death. Frustrated and needing to hear a realistic prognosis, Zora uses her art to show her mother the truth of how ill she looks. Later that night her mom dies—and Zora’s Voom goes away. When Grandma Wren disappoints Frankie on her seventh birthday, Zora’s guilt-fueled anger erupts. Over Frankie’s protests, Zora scribbles out her drawings until the scribbles fight back, pulling the girls into Pencilvania, a world where each of Zora’s creations lives. Most of her now-animated drawings welcome her—except for one scribbled-out horse who kidnaps Frankie. Guided by a seven-legged horse, the Zoracle (a composite of her early self-portraits), and other charming creations, Zora sets out to rescue Frankie and rediscover the wellspring of creativity that forms her mother’s legacy. Presumed White, the humans are well rounded and believable. Pencilvania’s inhabitants, conceived with humorous, metafictional whimsy, are enlivened with copious, inventive illustrations.
A vibrant celebration of art’s power to console and heal. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-72821-590-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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