A warm play on the theme of inclusivity, with horrors more huggable than otherwise.
A sheltered young monster discovers that the world isn’t as hostile to her kind as she had been led to believe.
Readers who like their monsters cute as well as scary are in for a treat, as Davault fills her panels and montages with the (mostly) humanoid but variously horned, clawed, fanged, and multiheaded inhabitants of Mr. Halloway’s Home for Horrors. They possess expressive faces, stylishly disarranged bangs (or, as the case may be, tentacles), and distinctly childlike ways. Blue-skinned, tufty-tailed Iris has always been told by (human) Mr. Halloway that he is protecting her and her fellow creatures in his isolated manor house from being hunted down. But when she takes advantage of a rare chance to venture into nearby Dead End Springs, she gets a warm welcome—from everyone except Mathias, an orphan raised by his traumatized aunt to believe that monsters are dangerous. Some actually are, it turns out…but after the frightening dolls one horror creates sell like hotcakes to the delighted locals and Iris’ companions help to save the town from an escaped dreamon who has turned into a nightmare, even Mathias comes around. Better yet, Iris emerges with her yearning to belong to a family fulfilled by the discovery that she has really been living with one all along, and she joins her housemates in turning the mansion into a monster hotel.
A warm play on the theme of inclusivity, with horrors more huggable than otherwise. (author’s note, concept art) (Graphic fantasy. 8-11)Pub Date: July 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781665903080
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
A fine emotional stretch within reach of the intended audience.
When siblings Jessie and Evan (The Lemonade War, 2007, and The Lemonade Crime, 2011) accompany their mother on the time-honored midwinter holiday visit to their grandmother’s home in the mountains, the changes are alarming.
Fire damage to the house and Grandma’s inability to recognize Evan are as disquieting as the disappearance of the iron bell, hung long ago by their grandmother on Lowell Hill and traditionally rung at the New Year. Davies keeps a tight focus on the children: Points of view switch between Evan, with his empathetic and emotional approach to understanding his world, and Jessie, for whom routine is essential and change a puzzle to be worked out. When Grandma ventures out into the snow just before twilight, it is Evan who realizes the danger and manages to find a way to rescue her. Jessie, determined to solve the mystery of the missing bell, enlists the help of Grandma's young neighbor Maxwell, with his unusual habitual gestures and his surprising ability to solve jigsaw puzzles. She is unprepared, however, for the terror of seeing the neighbor boys preparing a mechanical torture device to tear a live frog to pieces. Each of the siblings brings a personal resilience and heroism to the resolution.
A fine emotional stretch within reach of the intended audience. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-56737-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
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