A heartfelt, ambitious, and often charming story with a significant emotional punch.
A lost bird and new neighbors help a community move past prejudice in High’s illustrated middle-grade book.
Eleven-year-old Magnolia Cooper isn’t looking forward to spending her summer in Murdock, Mississippi, working part-time at her mom’s beauty salon. Magnolia doesn’t understand her mother’s interest in external beauty, although she comes from a long line of baby beauty pageant contestants. The tween has been struggling to connect with anyone at all, since her dad died four years ago and her best friend, Emma, moved away in December. Things get worse when her cockatiel, Third Bird, escapes his cage and goes missing. Magnolia, who hasn’t yet found the courage to visit her father’s grave, begins searching the city for her missing pet, a gift from her father. When she and her grandmother get into a car accident while looking for Third Bird, her new neighbors—Violet and her 12-year-old grandson, Jeremiah—pull over to help out. Magnolia realizes that Jeremiah’s dad is also deceased, so the two quickly bond. As they search together, the two meet other residents who are happy to assist and share their own stories. They include a man named Eli Whitney, who’s in jail for drunk driving; Rocky, an androgynous employee at Kraemer’s Feed Mill; and Polly, a military veteran and wheelchair user who owns Polly’s Precious Pets. With Jeremiah, who’s Black, guiding her, Magnolia, who’s white, learns more about her community and specifically how prejudice affects the people who live in it. The large cast of characters in High’s book results in a series of scenes that touch on important issues only briefly and without much depth; the dialogue can also be overly explanatory at times. However, the book does provide an excellent introduction to the different ways in which bigotry can affect small communities, and young readers are likely to enjoy the quick pace and quirky personalities. They’ll also likely appreciate Trinidad’s occasional grayscale cartoon illustrations, which portray various characters and scenes that appear throughout the novel.
A heartfelt, ambitious, and often charming story with a significant emotional punch.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
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