A fairy tale with imaginative characters and engaging artwork that might have benefited from a tighter narrative focus.
Franks explores themes of resilience, reinvention, and friendship in this nature-based third installment of a fantasy series.
The story centers around Wynter, a woman who leaves her husband, Aidan, after discovering that he was deceiving her and was involved in activities that harmed the environment. In the Crooked Forest, a shapeshifting hare named Kai crosses paths with Wynter and leads her to a “strange and surreal world,” where a fairy named Pumpkin Berry cares for Wynter while a windstorm rages outside. After the storm passes, Wynter leaves and stumbles upon the hut of Old Mother Troll. She, along with an owl, teaches her how to perceive deception. Meanwhile, Aidan catches Luna, a little person known as a Shun, illegally gathering mistletoe and tries to stone her before she escapes. Luna’s health deteriorates without the mistletoe, so a Corgi friend named Sir Gyzmo sets out to find some. In the forest, he encounters the Green Man, who saves Luna’s life. In the final chapter, Wynter confesses to her new friend Luna that she’s lost faith in love. Luna shares her own failed relationship story but advises Wynter that “Broken love can be like broken glass. You will only hurt yourself trying to put the broken pieces back together.” The book closes with Wynter, Luna, Luna’s daughter Willow, and Sir Gyzmo forming a chosen family. Among the book’s creative mythical creatures and storylines, Franks sprinkles in fun facts, such as that “hares can run more than forty miles per hour and can jump up to ten feet in the air.” The narrative also offers lessons about emotions, as in a description of grieving Aidan, who “felt stark and gloomy, like a tree that has shed all its leaves and is left naked and unprotected.” Frank’s earth-toned illustrations enhance the spooky, otherworldly atmosphere. However, some of the talk about relationships may prove too mature and unrelatable for younger audiences, and the book’s numerous characters, locations, and backstories often make for a chaotic narrative.
A fairy tale with imaginative characters and engaging artwork that might have benefited from a tighter narrative focus.Pub Date: July 1, 2021
ISBN: 9781664179820
Page Count: 58
Publisher: XlibrisUS
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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
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