Both gripping and lyrical—a fine time-travel tale.
After time traveling to the Bronze Age, a girl must save a community and her brother in this debut middle-grade novel.
The family farm in Wiltshire, England, where 12-year-old Lizzie Greenwood lives, stands close to the remains of an ancient stone circle called the Bull Stones. Her brother, Daniel, 14, is fascinated by the circle and a nearby Bronze Age site being excavated by archaeologists. As the two investigate the area on a winter solstice evening, they’re charged by a herd of eerie bulls. Lizzie and Daniel flee between the stones—and find themselves in broad summer daylight some 3,000 years ago near a village of roundhouses. The siblings learn that the villagers are called the Horse People, and their enemy is the Bullmaster, who kills women and children and steals men’s souls for his slave army. The Horse People’s queen could stop him, but she’s been mortally wounded by a bull. When the Bullmaster seizes Daniel, Lizzie realizes she must use the stones to prevent disaster by traveling back and forth through time. Time travel is a compelling theme, and Kay handles it well in her book. Lizzie’s trips through the stones make storytelling sense, as when she gets penicillin—used on her family’s farm to treat animals—to save the queen. Lizzie herself is brave and appealingly thoughtful as she wrestles with the question of whom to trust. Her special connection to the stones helps explain her ability to understand and speak the ancient language, often a sticking point in time-travel stories (although the supposedly Bronze Age tongue is closer to Chaucer’s Middle English). Kay’s writing is another pleasure, atmospheric and poetic even when describing small details: “Sheep’s wool straggles of smoke clinging to the air.” The black-and-white illustrations by debut artist Rothaus are skillfully shaded and composed, adding to the book’s sense of mystery.
Both gripping and lyrical—a fine time-travel tale.Pub Date: March 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-910237-58-8
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Hayloft Publishing Ltd
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship.
A young tennis champion becomes the target of revenge.
In this sequel to Legacy and the Queen (2019), Legacy Petrin and her friends Javi and Pippa have returned to Legacy’s home province and the orphanage run by her father. With her friends’ help, she is in training to defend her championship when they discover that another player, operating under the protection of High Consul Silla, is presenting herself as Legacy. She is so convincing that the real Legacy is accused of being an imitation. False Legacy has become a hero to the masses, further strengthening Silla’s hold, and it becomes imperative to uncover and defeat her. If Legacy is to win again, she must play her imposter while disguised as someone else. Winning at tennis is not just about money and fame, but resisting Silla’s plans to send more young people into brutal mines with little hope of better lives. Legacy will have to overcome her fears and find the magic that allowed her to claim victory in the past. This story, with its elements of sports, fantasy, and social consciousness that highlight tensions between the powerful and those they prey upon, successfully continues the series conceived by late basketball superstar Bryant. As before, the tennis matches are depicted with pace and spirit. Legacy and Javi have brown skin; most other characters default to White.
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949520-19-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Granity Studios
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Though occasionally heavy-handed, this debut offers a vivid glimpse of the 1960s South through the eyes of a spirited girl...
The closing of her favorite swimming pool opens 11-year-old Gloriana Hemphill’s eyes to the ugliness of racism in a small Mississippi town in 1964.
Glory can’t believe it… the Hanging Moss Community Pool is closing right before her July Fourth birthday. Not only that, she finds out the closure’s not for the claimed repairs needed, but so Negroes can’t swim there. Tensions have been building since “Freedom Workers” from the North started shaking up status quo, and Glory finds herself embroiled in it when her new, white friend from Ohio boldly drinks from the “Colored Only” fountain. The Hemphills’ African-American maid, Emma, a mother figure to Glory and her sister Jesslyn, tells her, “Don’t be worrying about what you can’t fix, Glory honey.” But Glory does, becoming an activist herself when she writes an indignant letter to the newspaper likening “hateful prejudice” to “dog doo” that makes her preacher papa proud. When she’s not saving the world, reading Nancy Drew or eating Dreamsicles, Glory shares the heartache of being the kid sister of a preoccupied teenager, friendship gone awry and the terrible cost of blabbing people’s secrets… mostly in a humorously sassy first-person voice.
Though occasionally heavy-handed, this debut offers a vivid glimpse of the 1960s South through the eyes of a spirited girl who takes a stand. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-33180-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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