Powerful and fun.
Death and Sparkles are ready to take on the world!
And by world, we mean social media consumption, the temptations of fame, the fickle nature of celebrity, and the connection between consumerism and ecology. But still, that’s a lot! When Sparkles, the last unicorn on Earth, has a fatal accident while promoting a sponsored product, he comes into contact with Death, an otherworldly employee of the claims department who is armed with the “powers of bureaucracy.” (I.e., he kills creatures by touching them, but only if their paperwork is in order.) At the same time, a trio of sentient extraterrestrial lizards are trying to educate humanity about proper citizenship and planetary care. With Sparkles’ death, the trio are lured into being a substitute act by Sparkles’ manager. How will the influencer lifestyle pair with their values of personal responsibility and conservation? And what happens if Sparkles comes back to life? The story juggles a lot, but it manages to deftly keep all the balls in the air and packs several compelling messages into one very funny graphic novel. The memorable digital illustrations in soft pastels evoke watercolors and colored pencil and complement the text with flair. Readers will be enchanted and will ponder for some time the ideas presented here.
Powerful and fun. (Graphic science fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-79720-635-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A refreshing adventure featuring family, friendship, and the power of creating new recipes.
Shad Hadid plans to learn everything about being an alchemist—if necromancers don’t get him first.
After things didn’t work out with his hostile stepfather and stepsiblings, Shad left Lebanon with his father and grandparents to start over in Maine. Since his father and grandfather were killed in a car crash, it’s been just him and Teta, his grandmother. Eleven-year-old Shad spends his time baking new concoctions, staring in the windows of the only Arabic bakery in town, and dodging his bully (and one-time friend), Sarah Decker, a White girl with xenophobic parents. When he stumbles into an alley behind the bakery that he shouldn’t have been able to see, Shad learns that he is descended from alchemists. Eager to learn more, he enrolls in the Alexandria Academy only to find that they dismiss alchemy. Even worse, Sarah and Yakoub, his menacing stepbrother, are also students there. Clearly, it will be up to Shad to restore the alchemists to greatness and to deliver the school from the clutches of necromancers who seek to discover the key to immortality. As Shad makes friends, confronts bullies, and learns how alchemy is like both baking and science, he grows and gains confidence in himself. Alexandria Academy offers a fresh take on magic schools with dark secrets, and Shad and his friends, most of whom are Middle Eastern and North African, are engaging.
A refreshing adventure featuring family, friendship, and the power of creating new recipes. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-309481-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
All aboooooard!
Mbalia takes the legacy of Pullman porters as inspiration for his latest fantasy world rooted in Black lore and traditions in this series opener.
Twelve-year-old Jax Freeman is an unwilling transplant to Chicago, sent away from his Raleigh, North Carolina, home by his parents after an incident lands him in the juvenile justice system. Just about as soon as he descends from the train, the weirdness starts: Inanimate objects speak to him, a strange old woman tells him his ancestors need him, and a terrifying creature tries to steal his skin. The strangeness keeps building, from the inspirational signs at his grandmother’s house that keep changing their messages to the class in…magic?…at DuSable Middle School. And what’s with the peculiar reactions he gets whenever people learn his surname? Pretty soon Jax is riding a magic train called the Shriek, charged with a mission to heal a feud among the five magical summoning families of Chicago—a mission that killed his great-great-grandfather. Jax spends most of the novel in a state of frustration as he tries to understand this new world, and readers may sympathize as they wait with him for other characters to dole out information. Mbalia has so much fun developing the world’s rules and inhabitants, though, that readers will probably not mind the adventure’s bagginess. Jax has a digressive narrative style that runs to broad comedy, but it’s his fundamental decency that really shines.
All aboooooard! (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781368064736
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Freedom Fire/Disney
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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