An original and witty adventure that celebrates the imagination.
An ogre poet embarks on a quest to save his lively bad ideas from a monster in this debut children’s novel.
Mulrox is not your typical ogre. He’s scrawny, and worse, he loves poetry more than smashing things. All in all, he’s a huge disappointment to his Great-Aunt Griselda, who’s an ogre’s ogre. After breaking a hip in a roof-stomping accident, she has taken over Mulrox’s bedroom—and now threatens to take over his house. He can stop her, she says, only by winning an upcoming talent competition; Mulrox accepts the challenge but is full of self-doubt, never satisfied with his own work. On top of that, a squirrelmonk has a message for him: “Events are in motion….It can’t be helped. You’ll just have to do your best.” His destiny, it seems, is to help a swarm of malcognitos—his own bad ideas come to life—defeat the Vaccus, their enemy and the embodiment of writer’s block. But first, they must find the portal to Sounous, the malcognitos’ home, and that won’t be easy, even with Mulrox’s eccentric neighbor Yahgurkin tagging along to help. In her book, Smith demonstrates the same love of words that characterizes Mulrox. Her wonderfully expressive, inventive vocabulary resembles that in Norman Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth (1961), with an ogre flavor all its own. The story thinks through its mythology in compelling ways, as when Sounous, the land of ideas both good and bad, is described as a “magnificent palace with a thatched roof and wooden door. Everyone should be interested in it.” Because the novel presents itself as a portal/quest story, readers will likely expect the real adventure to begin after the portal is found—but that doesn’t happen until well over two-thirds of the way through, making the pace feel off.
An original and witty adventure that celebrates the imagination.Pub Date: March 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73421-690-5
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Fog Field Press
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship.
A young tennis champion becomes the target of revenge.
In this sequel to Legacy and the Queen (2019), Legacy Petrin and her friends Javi and Pippa have returned to Legacy’s home province and the orphanage run by her father. With her friends’ help, she is in training to defend her championship when they discover that another player, operating under the protection of High Consul Silla, is presenting herself as Legacy. She is so convincing that the real Legacy is accused of being an imitation. False Legacy has become a hero to the masses, further strengthening Silla’s hold, and it becomes imperative to uncover and defeat her. If Legacy is to win again, she must play her imposter while disguised as someone else. Winning at tennis is not just about money and fame, but resisting Silla’s plans to send more young people into brutal mines with little hope of better lives. Legacy will have to overcome her fears and find the magic that allowed her to claim victory in the past. This story, with its elements of sports, fantasy, and social consciousness that highlight tensions between the powerful and those they prey upon, successfully continues the series conceived by late basketball superstar Bryant. As before, the tennis matches are depicted with pace and spirit. Legacy and Javi have brown skin; most other characters default to White.
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949520-19-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Granity Studios
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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