A fun quest with a courageous, troublemaking princess!
Amaya discovers that she is a princess of a magical realm and must help save her world and the family she left behind from an unprecedented threat.
Amaya, 9-year-old princess of the House of Amethyst in Gemworld, uses her magical abilities to amuse herself and her younger brother, Quartz, usually at the expense of the servants and her parents. When Amaya goes too far, her parents send her to Earth for one week to teach her some respect and discipline, but something goes wrong, and she is trapped earthside for three years. Prince Topaz, a royal of her realm, eventually tracks down Amaya—who has forgotten who she is—and brings her and her earthly best friend, Autumn, to Gemworld, which is in disarray. Amaya’s parents and brother have mysteriously vanished, and Flaw—a brawny giant made of amethyst and with spikes growing out of its head and shoulders—is roaming the countryside terrorizing citizens and devouring the gem mines in the twelve kingdoms. It’s up to Amaya to fix things and find her family, but she barely remembers her birthplace and hasn’t used magic for years…what could she possibly do to help? Young readers will quickly become absorbed in this action-packed yet undemanding adventure with its colorful, entertaining, and expressive artwork. The humor, in particular, is well played. Characters—servants and nobility alike—have a variety of skin colors, body types, and physical features. Amaya is White, and Autumn is Black with textured hair and locs.
A fun quest with a courageous, troublemaking princess! (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3677-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: DC Comics
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Imaginative, feel-good fun.
More magical al fresco adventures abound!
In this full-color follow-up to Aster and the Accidental Magic (2020), Aster and her talking dog, Buzz, return in two new tales. In the first, “Why So Much Wool?” strange accidents repeatedly occur around Aster’s village, and upon investigation, she and Buzz discover a rogue band of muttonheaded sheep (known as the BAAAAAH-ligerent Army) led by a talking ram named Keras, who has proclaimed himself the Great Leader of the Sheep Revolution. Lucky for Aster, the dimwitted sheep are easily outsmarted, but not Keras, whom she must stop before he destroys her home. The second tale, “The End of Everything (and What Was Left),” focuses more on the natural magic from the previous volume. Each season has a royal who helps preserve the balance, passing along a crown to mark the transitions between their reigns. When the crown disappears, Aster ventures to the Labyrinth of Chimeras in an attempt to reforge it and restore the balance before the trickster Rapscallion can escape. This second outing pulls readers into a delightfully wrought world with a strong emphasis on nature and the outdoors and the real and imaginary magic contained therein. Joyous, effervescent illustrations mark this French import. For Aster aficionados, further journeys are hinted at in a subsequent volume in which Aster and her family travel to Japan. Aster and most human characters read as White.
Imaginative, feel-good fun. (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12534-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House Graphic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
This kid-friendly satire ably sets claws into a certain real-life franchise.
A trip to the Love Love Angel Kitty World theme park (“The Most Super Incredibly Happy Place on Earth!”) turns out to be an exercise in lowered expectations…to say the least.
When Uncle Murray wins a pair of free passes it seems at first like a dream come true—at least for Kitty, whose collection of Love Love Kitty merch ranges from branded underwear to a pink chainsaw. But the whole trip turns into a series of crises beginning with the (as it turns out) insuperable challenge of getting a cat onto an airplane, followed by the twin discoveries that the hotel room doesn’t come with a litter box and that the park doesn’t allow cats. Even kindhearted Uncle Murray finds his patience, not to say sanity, tested by extreme sticker shock in the park’s gift shop and repeated exposures to Kitty World’s literally nauseating theme song (notation included). He is not happy. Fortunately, the whole cloying enterprise being a fiendish plot to make people so sick of cats that they’ll pick poultry as favorite pets instead, the revelation of Kitty’s feline identity puts the all-chicken staff to flight and leaves the financial coffers plucked. Uncle Murray’s White, dumpy, middle-aged figure is virtually the only human one among an otherwise all-animal cast in Bruel’s big, rapidly sequenced, and properly comical cartoon panels.
This kid-friendly satire ably sets claws into a certain real-life franchise. (Graphic satire. 8-11)Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-20808-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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