An exciting trip through a wild, dangerous fantasy world that’s well worth it despite some bumps along the way.
In this debut children’s book, a 12-year-old boy’s journey into a fantastical world begins when he’s mysteriously guided to find a strange, glowing rock.
Jack Boomershine is a little different. A young inventor, he lives in a room “filled with gizmos and gadgets, half-worked doodads.” His best friend, Chase, is an equally misunderstood seventh-grade outcast who obsessively reads financial magazines. On a field trip to a cave, Jack gets anonymous texts on his phone that direct him away from the class. Is Chase playing a joke on him? Following a glowing light, he comes across its source—what appears to be a simple stone. But when Jack picks it up, he blacks out. Shortly after, he comes to, pockets the stone and rejoins the class, his absence unnoticed. The next day, the two boys happen upon a fortuneteller who speaks only in rhyme, though sometimes the rhyming takes precedence over meaning. Cryptically, she tells them: “Stand at the edge of a large cliff, you do. Looking down, very soon, the time for change will come for you.” True to the prophecy, the magic Jack had stumbled upon pulls him and Chase into an odd world peopled by wizards and hybrid creatures. For Jack, the journey turns out to be not just one of danger and adventure, but one of self-discovery and introspection. The well-drawn, memorable characters have equally memorable names: Oleagina and Caitiff Cankrot, and Vidalia and Pescipalius Dorfnutter. The story’s strength lies in these characters, their observations and their occasional waggish repartee, as well as the vivid descriptions and imagery. The illustrations—realistic yet infused with a dreamlike quality—would be stronger if, like the striking cover, they appeared in color instead of black and white. Also, the story can be a bit convoluted in places, and readers may have to work harder than they’d like to sort it all out. Oddly jarring among all the wizard terminology and descriptions of powers is a reference to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which may be unfamiliar to young readers.
An exciting trip through a wild, dangerous fantasy world that’s well worth it despite some bumps along the way.Pub Date: May 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0989207201
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Moonpepper Press
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.
A novel tells the story of two spirited girls who set out to save a lame foal in 1952.
Mary, age 12, lacks muscle control of her legs and must use a wheelchair. Her life is constantly interrupted by trips with her widower father to assorted doctors, all of whom have failed to help her. Mary tolerates the treatments, hoping to one day walk unassisted, but her true passion involves horses. Possessing a library filled with horse books, she loves watching and drawing the animals at a neighboring farm. She longs to own one herself. But her father, overprotective due to her disability and his own lingering grief over Mary’s dead mother, makes her keep her distance. Mary befriends Laura, the emotionally neglected daughter of the wealthy neighboring farm owners, and the two share secret buggy rides. Both girls are attracted to Illusion, a beautiful red bay filly on the farm. Mary learns that Illusion is to be put down by a veterinarian because of a lame leg. Horrified, she decides to talk to the barn manager about the horse (“Isn’t it okay for her to live even if she’s not perfect? I think she deserves a chance”). Soon, Mary and Laura attempt to raise money to save Illusion. At the same time, Mary begins to gain control of her legs thanks to water therapy and secret therapeutic riding with Laura. There is indeed a great deal of poignancy in a story of a girl with a disability fighting to defend the intrinsic value of a lame animal. But this book, the first installment of the Dream Horse Adventure Series, would be twice as touching if Mary interacted with Illusion more. In the tale’s opening, she watches the foal from afar, but she actually spends very little time with the filly she tries so hard to protect. This turns out to be a strange development given the degree to which the narrative relies on her devotion. Count (Selah’s Sweet Dream, 2015) draws Mary and Laura in broad but believable strokes, defined mainly by their unrelenting pluckiness in the face of adversity. While the work tackles disability, death, and grief, Mary’s and Laura’s environments are so idyllic and their optimism and perseverance so remarkable that the story retains an aura of uncomplicated gentleness throughout.
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Hastings Creations Group
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.
Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.
The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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