A sincere and insightful story of personal growth and acceptance.
A human-loving vampire wrestles with friendship, identity, and bodily changes when he loses his baby fangs.
For most vampires, fangs define who they are, but Ivan secretly hopes he’ll keep his harmless baby fangs forever, so he can stay with his human friends at Day School, the only place where he feels like he belongs. Around other vampires, Ivan never knows what to say or how to act. But on the first day of eighth grade, Ivan’s worst nightmare becomes a reality. As his adult fangs start growing in, Ivan struggles to hide them from his family, who don’t fully accept his attachment to humans, and his human friends, who must never learn he’s a vampire. Every day, he fights against his new sensitivity to blood, but he keeps fainting in class, and for reasons he doesn’t understand, he’s drawn to the heartbeat of new kid Damien, his lab partner in biology class. Snyder effectively uses color to create contrast between the human and vampire worlds, casting humans in sunny yellows (with skin tones in a spectrum of grays) and vampires in moody blues, which emphasize Ivan’s feelings. Although Ivan’s love for humans is taboo, his attraction to another boy creates no conflict. The worldbuilding (particularly the divide between vampires and humans) lacks depth and consistency, but this background weakness doesn’t overshadow the sweet and relevant coming-of-age story.
A sincere and insightful story of personal growth and acceptance. (Graphic paranormal. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780823457021
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
Delightfully disconcerting.
A tween befriends a mysterious changeling.
Casey Wilson hasn’t had many friends since the fabled sixth grade “Zoom Incident,” when a bully recorded his anxious tics and posted them online. But one day, after a mysterious phone call, a new friend arrives in a burlap bag. From the beginning, it’s clear this child (whose name is Morel) isn’t quite human; he has a claylike body and doesn’t eat or sleep. Casey’s gut sounds the alarm, but since his parents are unfazed, he rolls with the child’s appearance, too. The two kids start to connect over drawing, video games, and anime, but their similarities turn sinister as Morel slowly molds himself into Casey—voice and all. As Casey’s memories start to feel “far away,” his family begins to confuse him with Morel. Worse, they seem to prefer Morel over him. By the time Casey realizes what’s happening, it may be too late to get his life back. Horror veteran Tremblay draws on personal experience as an educator in his chilling middle-grade debut set in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. The third-person perspective enhances the suspense; even readers who figure out what’s going on will find it terrifying to observe Casey’s growing realization of what’s happening to his family. Connelly’s occasional full-page black-and-white illustrations add ambience, and some will surely fuel readers’ nightmares. Casey and his family present white. Casey’s diagnoses include transient tic disorder, slow executive functioning, and anxiety.
Delightfully disconcerting. (author’s note) (Horror. 9-12)Pub Date: July 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780063396357
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map.
A girl who delights in the macabre harnesses her inherited supernatural ability.
It’s not just her stark white hair that makes 11-year-old Zee Puckett stand out in nowheresville Knobb’s Ferry. She’s a storyteller, a Mary Shelley fangirl, and is being raised by her 21-year-old high school dropout sister while their father looks for work upstate (cue the wayward glances from the affluent demography). Don’t pity her, because Zee doesn’t acquiesce to snobbery, bullying, or pretty much anything that confronts her. But a dog with bleeding eyes in a cemetery gives her pause—momentarily—because the beast is just the tip of the wicked that has this way come to town. Time to get some help from ghosts. The creepy supernatural current continues throughout, intermingled with very real forays into bullying (Zee won’t stand for it or for the notion that good girls need to act nice), body positivity, socio-economic status and social hierarchy, and mental health. This debut from a promising writer involves a navigation of caste systems, self-esteem, and villainy that exists in an interesting world with intriguing characters, but they receive a flat, two-dimensional treatment that ultimately makes the book feel like one is learning a ho-hum lesson in morality. Zee is presumably White (as is her rich-girl nemesis–cum-comrade, Nellie). Her best friend, Elijah, is cued as Black. Warning: this just might spur frenzied requests for Frankenstein.
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map. (Supernatural. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304460-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
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