Sublime characters animate this lively, hair-raising tale.
In Mai’s middle-grade novel, a tween is convinced that a monster’s hiding in his neighbors’ backyard.
A year after losing his firefighter father, Stoney McCantz leaves New York with his mother for a new home in Oklahoma. On their first night there, during a storm, Stoney hears howling and spots a large, hairy creature (a “Bigfoot-look-alike”) climbing over his next-door neighbors’ fence. Locals have written off these neighbors, the Tacketts, as “strange,” in part because they’re reclusive. Stoney wants to verify that they’re harboring a monster. He befriends like-minded classmate Priscilla Sanchez, who’s willing to help Stoney sneak peeks into the Tacketts’ backyard—so long as no one tells her police chief father. This endeavor becomes Stoney’s obsession, and being late to class or getting home starts to upset both his mother and his fifth grade teacher, Ms. Kelly. But what can he tell the adults? They’ll think he’s lost his mind if he says he’s looking for a monster, so he vows to get proof and can only hope the elusive creature doesn’t eat kids. Mai serves up a series of delightfully spooky moments. Stoney, for the most part, only sees flashes of the Big Hairy Creature, as Priscilla dubs it, and it’s unnerving to not know exactly what the mysterious being is (though details gradually come to light). At the same time, there’s a sense of lingering grief as Stoney and his mom continue to mourn their loss. The cast is first-rate: Stoney is charmingly snarky, Ms. Kelly is tough but sympathetic, and Stoney’s mother is patient. (“Now there’s the kid I know and love. A lazy lunk that hates to get up in the morning.”) Williams’ simple black-and-white illustrations preface each chapter, effectively highlighting such elements as Stoney’s bare feet (he wakes up happy that he wasn’t mutilated overnight) and his beloved, dad-gifted baseball cap.
Sublime characters animate this lively, hair-raising tale.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9781966675495
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Solander Press
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2026
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
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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