While training to help helm the weather, a girl realizes that her country’s constructed climate has consequences.
Twelve-year-old Mina lives on her family’s farm in sunny Alorria, country of soft breezes and blue skies. There’s never been a tornado, hurricane, or thunderstorm; except on the mountaintops, snow exists only in stories. But the climate isn’t naturally occurring: Five types of storm beasts—sun, rain, wind, snow, lightning—and their loving human guardians keep the weather calm and productive. For example, they direct wind to the sea and moderate it to sailors’ advantage. When Mina’s beast hatches as a lightning beast, everyone’s shocked: Mina’s so quiet she often goes unheard, and lightning guardians should be “brash and loud and brave.” But Mina is brave, though sometimes self-doubting, and she finds creative ways to be heard. Probing the undiscussed connection between Alorria’s intentional weather and the weather across the mountains where “outsiders” live spurs this thoughtful heroine into forbidden actions to address her realization that “The truth ha[s] faces. And graves.” Race is unmentioned; nothing hints away from a white default. The effusive adoration between Mina and her beast, Pixit, evokes The Golden Compass’ Lyra and Pan, though Pixit and Mina can separate; readers will crave their own dragon-shaped storm beast with a face “like a lizard crossed with a puppy” to take them flying into storms and grabbing lightning with their hands.
Warm, exciting, hopeful, and ethical. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-97342-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Clarion
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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A San Diego preteen learns that she’s an elf, with a place in magic school if she moves to the elves’ hidden realm.
Having felt like an outsider since a knock on the head at age 5 left her able to read minds, Sophie is thrilled when hunky teen stranger Fitz convinces her that she’s not human at all and transports her to the land of Lumenaria, where the ageless elves live. Taken in by a loving couple who run a sanctuary for extinct and mythical animals, Sophie quickly gathers friends and rivals at Foxfire, a distinctly Hogwarts-style school. She also uncovers both clues to her mysterious origins and hints that a rash of strangely hard-to-quench wildfires back on Earth are signs of some dark scheme at work. Though Messenger introduces several characters with inner conflicts and ambiguous agendas, Sophie herself is more simply drawn as a smart, radiant newcomer who unwillingly becomes the center of attention while developing what turn out to be uncommonly powerful magical abilities—reminiscent of the younger Harry Potter, though lacking that streak of mischievousness that rescues Harry from seeming a little too perfect. The author puts her through a kidnapping and several close brushes with death before leaving her poised, amid hints of a higher destiny and still-anonymous enemies, for sequels.
Wholesome shading to bland, but well-stocked with exotic creatures and locales, plus an agreeable cast headed by a child who, while overly fond of screaming, rises to every challenge. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-4593-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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