A highly original, well-illustrated fairy tale/horror story.
In Thomas’ (Fenlick Whiskbur, 2019, etc.) middle-grade series starter, a girl with a strange ability must complete a mission in a twisted and dangerous fantasy realm.
On her 12th birthday, Cricket Kane expects her dad, as always, to give her one gift from him and another that represents her mom, who died the day that Cricket was born. This year, however, he’s oddly reluctant to give her the second gift. It’s a journal that her mother kept from ages 8 to 13, and it contains her mom’s notes about seeing the same kinds of visions that Cricket does: strange trails of colored dust, wafting around people and things. Her mother, however, thought that the dust had “magical properties” and that “tooth fairies” and their leader, “the santa,” knew more about it. This may sound like a somewhat juvenile premise for the book’s middle school target audience, but Thomas provides a fairy-tale twist that’s as audacious as it is inventive—and a mite horrific, to boot. Under the santa’s direction, a spiderlike tooth fairy kidnaps Cricket’s baby brother. Only the girl can see the true appearance of the monstrous “slugwump” that the fairy left in the child’s place; the creature infects people with corrupting black dust, which turns them against Cricket. A catlike “cattawisp” confirms to her that “The santa you think you know is not the santa who is.” To rescue her brother, Cricket must travel to the source of the evil: Aeryland, formerly called “Fairyland.” Along the way, she faces danger, injury, and betrayal as she tries to master her own dust-driven powers. Thomas’ dark fantasyland is a page-turner that’s teeming with unusual creatures such as tooth fairies, aka “gibber snatches”; bloodsucking “hematoads”; ticklish “critterpuffs”; needle-toothed “buttersprites”; giant mountain rabbits; ghastly “gargolems” that turn living things to stone; and the aforementioned slugwumps, which are significant to the plot’s outcome. Debut artist Loeblich offers beautiful black-and-white pen-and-ink illustrations, which are set in delicate oval frames on textless pages; Cricket and her dad are shown as dark skinned; her stepmother and best friend appear white. The images also capture the strange landscapes and creepy creatures in intricate detail.
A highly original, well-illustrated fairy tale/horror story.Pub Date: April 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-951406-06-6
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Ichigo Black Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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