Fans of Serafina and the Black Cloak (2015) will find much the same chills and sequel-primed mystery here.
A young girl with the power to manipulate shadows must fight for her life against enemies and friends alike in this middle-grade fantasy.
Emmeline, born under the blessing of a magic-granting comet, has had an affinity for shadows since infancy. Now 12, a white girl with shadow-black eyes and hair, Emmeline has a powerful talent for shadow weaving that delights her and terrifies those around her—and it doesn’t help that her own shadow, called Dar, has a life of its own. When her parents plan to hand her over to the Lady Aisling, who promises to “cure” Emmeline and others like her of their magic, Emmeline flees, taking shelter with a family that is also in hiding to protect their son, who can command light. Lagging under the yoke of exposition as Emmeline and Dar’s longtime intimacy steadily falls foul, the narrative culminates in a stampede of an ending in which Emmeline realizes how much she has been manipulated by one closest to her. The interplay of light and dark and the moral ambiguity threaded through Connolly’s worldbuilding are everything readers have come to expect from the author of Monstrous (2015), but despite efforts to push against the tired synonymy of darkness and evil, the effect is compromised by a key revelation.
Fans of Serafina and the Black Cloak (2015) will find much the same chills and sequel-primed mystery here. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4995-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
An absorbing introduction to the paradoxes and possibilities of time travel.
Two misfit 12-year-olds find friendship via a wormhole.
It’s 2023, and Mason is having a rough time at school and at home, so his parents send him to a therapist. She suggests that he write a letter about his problems to “anybody or nobody.” Although Mason decides to write to Albert Einstein, a quirk of spacetime causes the letter he’s hidden in his closet to instead find its way to a girl named Talia, who’s living in western Pennsylvania in 1987. It takes a while for both kids to believe they’re not the victims of some elaborate prank, but they become close friends and confidants through typical tweenage struggles—separated parents, sibling friction, bullying, and antisemitism from peers. (Talia refers to herself as “half-Jewish,” and while white-presenting Mason isn’t Jewish, as a New Yorker he has Jewish friends and classmates.) Both children in this epistolary novel put an unrealistic amount of detail into their letters, and at many points their voices sound awkwardly adult, especially when they’re discussing Talia’s experience of anti-Jewish bigotry. Readers will quickly become invested in Mason’s and Talia’s lives, however, and the mystery of how, and why, they’re connected is satisfying enough to keep the story moving forward. Readers aware of recent controversies surrounding Alice Walker may be surprised to see her cited positively in a book that addresses the scourge of antisemitism.
An absorbing introduction to the paradoxes and possibilities of time travel. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781338734218
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven pacing and clunky writing undermine this examination of trauma and PTSD.
Matthews, of the Dave Matthews Band, and co-author Smith offer a fantasy that explores the damage done by violence inflicted by one people against another.
Ten-year-old Kirra lives in an idyllic community hidden for generations inside a dormant volcano. When she and her little brother make unwise choices that help bring the violent, spindly, gray-skinned Takers to her community—with devastating results—Kirra feels responsible and leaves the volcano. Four years later, Kirra’s been adopted into a family of Tree Folk that live in the forest canopy. Though there are many Tree Folk, individual families care for their own and are politely distant from others. Kirra, suffering from (unnamed) PTSD, evades her traumatic memories by avoiding what she calls “Memory Traps,” but when the Takers arrive in the forest, she must face her trauma and attempt to make a community of the Tree Folk if they’re to survive. Although Kirra’s struggles through trauma are presented with sympathy and realistically rendered, some characters’ choices are so patently foolish they baldly read like the plot devices they are. Additionally, much preparation goes into one line of defense while other obvious factors are completely ignored, further pushing the story’s credibility. Kirra is brown skinned, as is her first family; Tree Folk appear not to be racially homogenous; and the Takers are all gray skinned.
Uneven pacing and clunky writing undermine this examination of trauma and PTSD. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4847-7871-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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