A wonderful story for all the scared people doing the right thing because nobody else will.
Canary “Ary” Mossheart’s no hero, but if adults won’t save Mama from the mold that’s killing her, she’ll have to try anyway.
Ary, a 12-year-old mold-scraper, lives in Terra—a terrarium world designed by the gardener to be a haven for fairies. She should get her wings any day now; they’ll be ground into magic dust to beat back the mold that is rotting Terra’s food, poisoning the water, and sickening and starving everyone except the privileged. Everyone expects Ary to be a hero like her legendary Gran, who journeyed to the Underground to bring back the cure for a plague, but all she wants is to help Mama. Ary braves the Gloom beyond the fence, where she makes unexpected friends and learns that Terra is built on multiple lies. If, before week’s end, a Mossheart doesn’t give their life to release the fairies from Terra, their world will die. Mix’s straightforward, magic-laced writing doesn’t shy away from hard but age-appropriately addressed truths of poverty, privilege, and natural disasters. Through tears and laughter, readers will easily follow this exciting, honest, and hopeful tale that speaks gently and clearly to kids’ fears and needs. It urges them to value their own experiences, reassures them that it’s OK to be angry when they’re left to pay for the mistakes of adults, and reminds them that kindness must guide us, even when we’re afraid.
A wonderful story for all the scared people doing the right thing because nobody else will. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780063254053
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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A beautiful, moving mythological adventure.
In a world based on Greek mythology, a 12-year-old aspires to be a Ferryer of the dead but gets off track when she meets a Living girl who’s found her way into the Underworld.
All Senka knows is her existence on an island in the middle of the Acheron River, “smack between the realm of the Living and the realm of the Dead,” where she’s the ward of Charon, the Ferryer of souls. Her teacher is an enormous raven named Mortimer. After Senka, who presents white, learns the Rules for Ferryers, Charon agrees to her repeated requests and starts training her to become a Ferryer. But when an emergency leads to Senka’s being left alone, she disobeys Charon’s explicit orders, takes the boat out on her own—and quickly learns that ferrying souls is far more complicated than she realized. She encounters dark-haired, brown-skinned Poppy, whose “edges are crisp”—she’s a Living girl who will sacrifice anything to find Joey, her younger brother who died. As Senka tries to convince Poppy to return to the Shore of the Living, the two get stuck in the Underwild, a “lawless place where chaos reigns” that’s filled with innumerable dangers and shrouded in secrets. Senka’s lively first-person narration relates the unexpected friendship that forms through her shared adventures with Poppy as they face mortality and the unknown. Debut author Targosz offers readers a meaningful exploration of grief and its impact on those left behind.
A beautiful, moving mythological adventure. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781665957632
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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