“La Llorona” and other traditional bugaboos from Mexican-American lore find modern young victims in this bilingual set of South Texas tales.
That ghostly mother seeking replacements for her dead children succeeds in two of Sandaña’s six offerings. The others are rather less eerie. Shy Joey fails to prevent his intended date, Marlen, from fatally “Dancing with the Devil,” and Cecelia comes to accept that “God’s Will Be Done” after a mysterious bull prevents her from meeting a suave stranger in defiance of parental orders. The other stories take almost comically grisly turns, with a mother’s warnings about the consequences of playing with knives coming literally true as “Louie Spills His Guts” through a small cut in his toe. Another lad is nearly “All Choked Up” in an ER waiting room by a severed hand that arrives in an ice chest. The original English versions occupy the first half of the volume, and their Spanish translations the second half.
Mild chills in either language. (Short stories. 10-12)Pub Date: April 30, 2012
ISBN: 979-1-55885-744-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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A fifth-grader struggles to fit in after he and his recently widowed mother move to a decidedly oddball new town.
As if the seemingly infinite pier, the lighthouse in the middle of town, and the beach teeming with enigmatic cats aren’t strange enough, Davy Jones discovers that his school locker has been relocated to the deep end of the swimming pool, his lunchtime fries are delivered by a “spudzooka,” and no one seems to be able to get his name right. On the other hand, his classmates welcome him, and in next to no time he’s breaking into an abandoned arcade to play pinball against a ghost, helping track down a pet pig gone missing on Gravity Maintenance Day, and like adventures that, often as not, take sinister swerves before edging back to the merely peculiar. Point-of-view duties pass freely from character to character, and chapters are punctuated with extracts from the Topsea School Gazette (“Today’s Seaweed Level: Medium-high and feisty”), bulletins on such topics as the safe handling of rubber ducks, and background notes on, for instance, the five local seasons, giving the narrative a pleasantly loose-jointed feel. Davy presents as white, but several other central cast members are specifically described as dark- or light-skinned and are so depicted in the frequent line drawings; one has two moms.
A deft mix of chills and chuckles, not quite as sideways as Wayside School but in the same district. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: April 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-368-00005-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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On her birthday, a teenager learns that she is one of the Crystal Cadets, a textbook group of young, magic-wielding heroines charged with saving the world from vague, clichéd darkness.
This series opener introduces Zoe to the other Crystal Cadets: Jasmine, Olivia, Gwen, Liz, Milena, and a sixth, who is used as a plot twist. They ride fabulous creatures like winged horses and giant butterflies and use magical tools to fight off creepy people with black eyes. Zoe seems only momentarily fazed to find her parents evidently possessed before being whisked away. Glib dialogue makes the book feel trite and superficial. “Nonny, nonny boo boo. You can’t catch me!” sings a young cadet as she faces off against what looks like a toothed shadow. Attempts at puns create cringe-worthy moments: “Looks like the crystal's out of the bag!” The story was originally published as a digital comic series, and Toole’s writing offers mostly choppy transitions and is further hampered by poor worldbuilding, logic, and back story. In what feels like a halfhearted stab at grounding the story, Olivia explains, “The darkness has been around forever. It feeds on bad stuff, like fear and greed and bad manners.” If both story and illustrations remind readers of Sailor Moon, that is about par for the course. O’Neill’s depictions are fair and in the vein of manga comics, though at times they look depthless.
Skip and pass. (Graphic fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63140-431-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Roar Comics/Lion Forge
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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