A traditional fantasy for patient readers.
Two children embark on a once-in-a-lifetime quest in this translated title from Germany.
When London girl Portia Beale visits her aunts—Rose and her partner, Bramble—in the countryside of North Wales, she isn’t expecting the adventure of a lifetime. Really, following the fox who appears one day seems like a harmless thing to do. But when the animal leads her to a mysterious door in a stone wall, Portia can’t help seeing whether there’s a magical world on the other side. Soon Rose and Ben Rees, a quiet local boy, are racing to close the door that Portia so innocently opened, beginning a quest to save both the human and faerie worlds from the powerful Gray King, whose sinister fog threatens to suck the memories and life from all it touches. Pulling characters and inspiration from a variety of sources, including Welsh mythology and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this fantasy relies on classic quest tropes as it meanders to the inevitable culminating battle between good and evil. The dual perspectives follow Portia’s and Ben’s journeys, which diverge at times, but this structure sadly doesn’t speed up the slow pacing. Both protagonists have strong backstories, yet their motivations fail to inspire an emotional connection. It’s unclear whether the unfortunate use of problematic terms such as spirit animal and chop, chop reflect connotations in the original text or were introduced in the translation process. All characters read white.
A traditional fantasy for patient readers. (cast list, Welsh glossary) (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781665910194
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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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