A quest undertaken for love and healing, replete alike with astonishing marvels and provocative themes.
Seeing both her beloved brother and a special tree succumbing to a mysterious disease, a child in Mexico City sets out to find a cure.
Ever since what 10-year-old Lola will only call “The Thing That Happened,” she’s been helping Alex, her 14-year-old brother who’s struggling with “the Darkness.” But her concern takes on real urgency when she spots gray spots on his skin that grow along with his increasing exhaustion and withdrawal. At the same time, plants in their garden and the Tree around which their house is built develop crusty spots and gray leaves, despite the care of the chaneques (nature spirits invisible to all but Lola). And when, in hopes of finding help for the Tree, she travels to its progenitor, the mighty Tree of Sources in the magical realm of Floresta, she discovers that the malady has been caused by a new young queen whose struggles offer a clue to the cause of Alex’s affliction. Frequent glimpses of wondrous sights and folkloric creatures give the tale a flavor of magical realism, and on the way to a transformative closing twist, Valenti’s characters reflect on the importance of letting some things go in order to allow others to grow, offering much food for thought for readers who are similarly stuck. Final art not seen.
A quest undertaken for love and healing, replete alike with astonishing marvels and provocative themes. (author’s note, notes on terms and concepts, reader’s guide) (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593177006
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful, moving mythological adventure.
In a world based on Greek mythology, a 12-year-old aspires to be a Ferryer of the dead but gets off track when she meets a Living girl who’s found her way into the Underworld.
All Senka knows is her existence on an island in the middle of the Acheron River, “smack between the realm of the Living and the realm of the Dead,” where she’s the ward of Charon, the Ferryer of souls. Her teacher is an enormous raven named Mortimer. After Senka, who presents white, learns the Rules for Ferryers, Charon agrees to her repeated requests and starts training her to become a Ferryer. But when an emergency leads to Senka’s being left alone, she disobeys Charon’s explicit orders, takes the boat out on her own—and quickly learns that ferrying souls is far more complicated than she realized. She encounters dark-haired, brown-skinned Poppy, whose “edges are crisp”—she’s a Living girl who will sacrifice anything to find Joey, her younger brother who died. As Senka tries to convince Poppy to return to the Shore of the Living, the two get stuck in the Underwild, a “lawless place where chaos reigns” that’s filled with innumerable dangers and shrouded in secrets. Senka’s lively first-person narration relates the unexpected friendship that forms through her shared adventures with Poppy as they face mortality and the unknown. Debut author Targosz offers readers a meaningful exploration of grief and its impact on those left behind.
A beautiful, moving mythological adventure. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781665957632
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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