by Kathryn Tanquary ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 5, 2016
An introductory foray into Japanese culture for fantasy readers.
A Japanese teen travels the spirit world to break a curse upon her family.
Tanquary’s debut explores the Japanese spirit world through 13-year-old Saki. Her family travels to her grandmother’s rural village for its Obon ceremony, but she’d rather spend her summer vacation with her friends back in Tokyo. On the first evening of the night parade, when ancestors’ spirits return to visit their relatives, Saki is tricked by local kids into ringing a sacred bell. Later that night, she is awoken by the first of three spirit guides who aid her quest to break the curse of death upon her family. She soon learns that the entire human world is in grave danger. During her journey she meets spirits she has only seen in her childhood books. Most spirits do not care for human children, but Saki manages to find help in unexpected places. Tanquary provides a cursory introduction to Shinto tradition and culture but fails to fully commit to the Japanese spirit world. Some spirits are called by their Japanese names while others use the English translations (“fox” instead of “kitsune” and “ogre” instead of “oni”; but “kappa” for a water-spirit and “tengu” for a birdlike spirit). This inconsistency, together with a tendency to tell rather than show, distracts readers from the supernatural elements of Saki’s adventures and keeps them from immersing themselves in her world.
An introductory foray into Japanese culture for fantasy readers. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4926-2324-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
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by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 21, 2015
Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and...
Good has won every fairy-tale contest with Evil for centuries, but a dark sorcerer’s scheme to turn the tables comes to fruition in this ponderous closer.
Broadening conflict swirls around frenemies Agatha and Sophie as the latter joins rejuvenated School Master Rafal, who has dispatched an army of villains from Capt. Hook to various evil stepmothers to take stabs (literally) at changing the ends of their stories. Meanwhile, amid a general slaughter of dwarves and billy goats, Agatha and her rigid but educable true love, Tedros, flee for protection to the League of Thirteen. This turns out to be a company of geriatric versions of characters, from Hansel and Gretel (in wheelchairs) to fat and shrewish Cinderella, led by an enigmatic Merlin. As the tale moves slowly toward climactic battles and choices, Chainani further lightens the load by stuffing it with memes ranging from a magic ring that must be destroyed and a “maleficent” gown for Sophie to this oddly familiar line: “Of all the tales in all the kingdoms in all the Woods, you had to walk into mine.” Rafal’s plan turns out to be an attempt to prove that love can be twisted into an instrument of Evil. Though the proposition eventually founders on the twin rocks of true friendship and family ties, talk of “balance” in the aftermath at least promises to give Evil a fighting chance in future fairy tales. Bruno’s polished vignettes at each chapter’s head and elsewhere add sophisticated visual notes.
Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and flashes of hilarity. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: July 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-210495-3
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2015
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by Natalie Babbitt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1975
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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