This captivating tale of magic spells and a young hero launches a promising saga.
A boy discovers his family’s surprising history at a school for magic in this middle-grade supernatural novel.
Wil Wychwood loses his grandmother, who had raised him since his parents’ deaths, and their Toronto home to a sudden fire. The 10-year-old boy now only has his cherished snake, Esme, who joins him on his train ride to Winnipeg. That’s where he’ll be living with his two aunts and cousin Sophie—relatives he didn’t even know he had. It turns out he’s part of a family of mages, though Wil is initially skeptical. The city of MiddleGate is special, and Wil and Sophie attend an academy where they learn magic. It’s a bizarre school of bullies, stern mage teachers, and the library’s notoriously pesky ghost. But there may be a genuine menace hiding among the people of MiddleGate. Wil suspects a person in authority is up to no good, while his aunt Violet cryptically warns him about an ancient, enigmatic secret society. Indeed, someone willing to commit kidnapping and possibly worse crimes wants something from Wil. In this series opener, Bridgman grounds her narrative with a likable young hero trying to fit in at a new school. Wil loves books and absolutely adores Esme, a nonvenomous reptile who doesn’t bite. The author gradually and skillfully adds supernatural elements, such as students and mages manipulating their shadows. There are also abundant mysteries involving the academy and the protagonist’s past; certain characters are actually more important than they first appear, including an old friend of Wil’s. The author, meanwhile, depicts the city’s landscapes with assiduity and panache: “Gravestones leaned perilously in derelict cemeteries, and exploded tire shreds pitched like so many dead blackbirds along the highway.” Although most questions raised have no answers in sight, a couple of reveals are doozies.
This captivating tale of magic spells and a young hero launches a promising saga.Pub Date: April 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5255-8590-6
Page Count: 234
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enthralling fantasy debut exploring exploitation by those in power.
Will 12-year-old Nura be able to outsmart the trickster jinn and save herself and her friends?
Nura lives in the fictional Pakistani town of Meerabagh, where she has worked mining mica to help support her family of five—her mother, herself, and her three younger siblings—since her father’s death. In the mines she has the company of her best friend, Faisal, who is teased by other kids for his stutter, and she enjoys small pleasures like splurging on gulab jamun. Although Maa wants Nura to stop working and attend school, she has no interest in classroom learning and hopes to save up to send her younger siblings to school instead so they can break the family’s cycle of poverty. Following a mining accident in which Faisal and others are lost in the rubble, Nura goes to the rescue. In her quest, she is plunged into the magical, glittering jinn realm, where nothing is as it seems. The author seamlessly weaves into the worldbuilding of the story commentary on real-life problems such as the ravages of child labor and systems that perpetuate inequities. An informative author’s note further explores present-day global cycles of oppression as well as the life-changing power of education. This action-packed story set in a Muslim community moves at a fast pace, with evocative writing that brings the fantasy world to life and lyrical imagery to describe emotions.
An enthralling fantasy debut exploring exploitation by those in power. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5795-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
A vibrant celebration of art’s power to console and heal.
Zora, 12, shares her mother’s artistic gifts, but when grief and guilt lead her to destroy years of drawings, the results are astonishing.
Voom is Zora and her mom’s word for the artistic impulse that bubbles up inside. After disclosing her leukemia diagnosis to Zora and her sister, Frankie, Mom promised the girls she’d beat it. Ten months later, their far sicker mom is hospitalized in Pittsburgh, where the girls share their bus driver grandmother’s basement apartment. Mom continues to be optimistic and avoid acknowledging the possibility of death. Frustrated and needing to hear a realistic prognosis, Zora uses her art to show her mother the truth of how ill she looks. Later that night her mom dies—and Zora’s Voom goes away. When Grandma Wren disappoints Frankie on her seventh birthday, Zora’s guilt-fueled anger erupts. Over Frankie’s protests, Zora scribbles out her drawings until the scribbles fight back, pulling the girls into Pencilvania, a world where each of Zora’s creations lives. Most of her now-animated drawings welcome her—except for one scribbled-out horse who kidnaps Frankie. Guided by a seven-legged horse, the Zoracle (a composite of her early self-portraits), and other charming creations, Zora sets out to rescue Frankie and rediscover the wellspring of creativity that forms her mother’s legacy. Presumed White, the humans are well rounded and believable. Pencilvania’s inhabitants, conceived with humorous, metafictional whimsy, are enlivened with copious, inventive illustrations.
A vibrant celebration of art’s power to console and heal. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-72821-590-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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