An enchanting fantasy about finding the confidence to take up space in the world.
A lonely girl must find her way out of the underworld and back home.
It’s Obon, a holiday for celebrating ancestors, but Anzu is feeling miserable. Her family just moved, and when a neighbor child tries to befriend her, she becomes angry and self-conscious and runs away, reminded of the girls who used to tease her about her Japanese name. A stray dog appears, jumping up and snatching the special necklace that belonged to her late grandmother from around Anzu’s neck. While pursuing the dog, Anzu falls and loses consciousness, waking up in Yomi. The dog, who’s the Gatekeeper of this Shinto underworld, tells her to leave, but Anzu doesn’t know how. Izanami no Mikoto, Queen of Yomi, offers to guide her—after Anzu joins her Obon banquet. But Anzu winds up cursed and bound to remain. Together with the Gatekeeper, whose role is to “guide souls to their destined realm,” Anzu must save the lost souls of children kidnapped by Izanami and find her way home before sunrise marks the end of Obon. Colored in muted green, orange, and purple, this beautifully illustrated work is full of magic as it follows Anzu’s journey of self-discovery after experiencing bullying, grief, and isolation. The fascinating and original spirit world is inspired by Nguyen’s family’s mix of Vietnamese and Japanese cultures and elements of Shintoism and Buddhism.
An enchanting fantasy about finding the confidence to take up space in the world. (author’s note, guide to Japanese folklore) (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9780593525272
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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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