A charming, big-hearted novel about friendship, grief, and poetry.
In Hourihan’s debut middle-grade novel, a girl and her friends attempt to win their Catholic school’s talent show.
Massachusetts, 1964: Things have been rough for Monty Moriarty ever since her mom died. The 11-year-old (whose real name is Montura) is in constant trouble with the nuns at All Saints School for her irreverence, her grades are floundering, and her father only pays attention to her when school calls about her behavior. In two weeks, All Saints will be hosting its annual mandatory talent show, in which students perform in teams of four. This year, the show comes with an added bit of incentive for Monty: “May an Abundance of Grace Befall the Winners,” reads the school flyer. Grace is precisely what Monty needs. “A person filled with grace—like Hail Mary full of grace—would find joy. For the longest time, Monty had thought she might never be happy again. Not unless Mom came back somehow.” Monty doesn’t have many talents beyond her encyclopedic knowledge of patron saints, but she has memorized a ton of poetry, and she decides to recite a poem for the show. The only problem is that she will need to assemble a team and teach them poems as well. She snatches up her reluctant best friend Danny; her leather-jacket-wearing, Elvis-haired crush Leon; and Danny’s cute but sickly crush Sandra. As tempers collide and Sandra’s condition worsens, a winning performance—and a chance at grace—may be floating out of Monty’s grasp. Hourihan brings the novel’s world to life through Monty’s playful—and incisive—point of view, as when she appraises Sandra: “Tiny Sandra. Blue eyes. Rhinestone glasses. With those auburn pigtails, she resembled Monty’s old Raggedy Ann Doll more than a sixth grader.” Not every detail rings exactly true; Monty’s Irish father speaks like a character on one of her grandmother’s Danny Thomas TV shows, dropping both a “faith and begorrah” and a “malarky” in his first scene. Generally, though, Hourihan evokes the time and place—and particularly the angst of childhood—with elegance and wit.
A charming, big-hearted novel about friendship, grief, and poetry.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781665760195
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister:...
A magnificently creepy fantasy pits a bright, bored little girl against a soul-eating horror that inhabits the reality right next door.
Coraline’s parents are loving, but really too busy to play with her, so she amuses herself by exploring her family’s new flat. A drawing-room door that opens onto a brick wall becomes a natural magnet for the curious little girl, and she is only half-surprised when, one day, the door opens onto a hallway and Coraline finds herself in a skewed mirror of her own flat, complete with skewed, button-eyed versions of her own parents. This is Gaiman’s (American Gods, 2001, etc.) first novel for children, and the author of the Sandman graphic novels here shows a sure sense of a child’s fears—and the child’s ability to overcome those fears. “I will be brave,” thinks Coraline. “No, I am brave.” When Coraline realizes that her other mother has not only stolen her real parents but has also stolen the souls of other children before her, she resolves to free her parents and to find the lost souls by matching her wits against the not-mother. The narrative hews closely to a child’s-eye perspective: Coraline never really tries to understand what has happened or to fathom the nature of the other mother; she simply focuses on getting her parents back and thwarting the other mother for good. Her ability to accept and cope with the surreality of the other flat springs from the child’s ability to accept, without question, the eccentricity and arbitrariness of her own—and every child’s own—reality. As Coraline’s quest picks up its pace, the parallel world she finds herself trapped in grows ever more monstrous, generating some deliciously eerie descriptive writing.
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister: Coraline is spot on. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-380-97778-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
SEEN & HEARD
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