A darkly funny rural tale with a scary bent.
A middle-grade novel tells the story of a girl’s monstrous discovery on the family farm.
Thirteen-year-old Limphetta “Limpy” O’Malley wants nothing more than to escape her Podunk town of Flesherton and attend a prestigious school for the arts. Local legend says that her family’s potato farm is cursed—the previous owner’s barn burned down, killing the prize horses inside—but for the O’Malleys, it has been merely unprofitable. The bank is threatening to foreclose, which means the only way Limpy is going to a private school is if she manages to win a scholarship. One night, punished by her draconian father and with the imaginary encouragements of her dead mother filling her head, Limpy is moving sacks of potatoes from one side of the cellar to the other when she detects a mysterious box half-buried in the dirt: “The top was a scrollwork of runes and symbols. A tiny sarcophagus, but whatever lay inside didn’t seem very dead.” Limpy opens the rattling box with her shovel. Inside she spies four eggs of different colors that quickly hatch into strange, fuzzy creatures, like newborn mammals or birds. They’re not exactly cute, but they’re too small to be evil. At least that’s what Limpy thinks, until livestock starts to disappear around the farm. Limpy thought money was the worst of her problems, but it may turn out that she’s awakened the real curse that hangs over her family’s land. Stewart’s (The Terminals: Spark, 2014, etc.) prose is full of the grit and grime one would expect from a novel set on a potato farm (at one point, Limpy’s brother Dylan “stuffed a baby potato up his nose, plugged the free nostril and shot the potato so that it hit her chest”). With its tyrannical parents, moronic siblings, goofy monsters, and dark humor, the book summons the works of middle-grade master Roald Dahl. Young readers interested in less cuddly fare should enjoy this offbeat story of curses, creatures, and lessons on finding satisfaction in one’s place in the world.
A darkly funny rural tale with a scary bent.Pub Date: May 18, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 166
Publisher: The Publishing House
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A reassuring riff on embracing imperfections.
A young rabbit frets about her upcoming violin performance in Icelandic singer-songwriter Laufey’s literary debut.
Mei Mei’s dream—“to share her music with the world”—is about to come true. She’s having her very first recital, complete with an orchestra, at the H’Opera House. But the day before the concert, Mei Mei is racked with anxiety. What if she plays a bum note in front of everyone? Sure enough, the worst happens mid-performance: She hits a clinker. But by remembering her mom’s reassuring sentiments from the night before (“Feel the wind…find the notes to make it right”), Mei Mei summons the strength to soldier on, and “wrong notes become right. Dissonance becomes beautiful.” At times, it all feels more like a resilience parable than a story, and the writing can be precious (“The flutter of butterflies wakes Mei Mei from her slumber”). Still, the message is solid, bolstered by O’Hara’s pencil and watercolor illustrations, which are plush-toy soft—fitting, as even prior to this book’s publication, a stuffed Mei Mei has been for sale at Grammy winner Laufey’s website. The tale features an all-animal, all-adorable cast, and endearingly, the art betrays no hint of modern times. A standout image presents Mei Mei onstage, temporarily incapacitated by her mistake and imagining her fellow musicians and their instruments with the color-blasted menace of an expressionist painting.
A reassuring riff on embracing imperfections. (author’s note, glossary) (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9798217051748
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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