Propulsive, wise, and heartbreaking.
For years Ziva bat Leah’s quest to cure her twin brother Pesah’s leprosy has consumed their lives.
When his health worsens, their parents arrange for him to be taken to a colony. But after Pesah has a celestial vision at their birthday party indicating that he will die on Rosh Hashanah, Ziva decides they must run away. Along with Almas, a sheydim, or demon, she rescues, they travel to the city of Luz, the only place the Angel of Death can’t go. Pasternack’s story is rich in the rhythms, values, and deep magic of Jewish culture and life in the Turkic Jewish empire of Khazaria. It revels in an often overlooked mythology, deploying exciting fantasy elements with ease. Ziva struggles with her fiery nature—stubbornness that is also an intense desire for justice. Her single-minded focus on saving Pesah blinkers her to the inevitability of death and the complexities of both their own fears and needs as she comes to understand them. Pesah is brilliant and gentle, kindhearted Almas faces prejudice for his demon nature, and the three form a charming traveling trio even amid fear and pain. More than simply an adventure, this is a story about grief and illness and arguing with the rules of the world, enduring and enjoying the living that happens between now and the end, threaded through with the profound, unshakeable love of two brave siblings.
Propulsive, wise, and heartbreaking. (afterword, glossary) (Historical fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-358-57203-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Versify/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Reflective children will revel in this thought-provoking world.
The journey to find a child becomes an existential quest for an abandoned teddy bear.
Buddy is not just any stuffed bear, but a blue Furrington Teddy with a Real Silk Heart. So why did he wake up in a landfill with other Furringtons of varying hues? A more pressing matter, however, is escaping Trashland and its murderous gulls and bulldozers. Yearning to connect with a child and achieve a state of peaceful Forever Sleep, Buddy and his new friends of differing temperaments and gifts set out on a harrowing journey through the city to find children who will want them. As they encounter other Furringtons in disarray, this opener in The Teddies Saga series becomes a mystery about why these teddies are being harmed in the first place. While the visceral narrative follows the teddy troupe’s adventurous challenges and survival, its focus is on Buddy’s inner struggles as he ponders identity, leadership, and other existential dilemmas. Kraus doesn’t shy away from anger, fear, death, and other dark subjects; instead they become opportunities for growth in difficult environments. Cai’s intense, slightly nightmarish grayscale illustrations add immeasurably to the text. Reminiscent of Watership Down in theme and structure, the novel’s intermittent teddy creation stories also become parables of a moral code and extend the epic story arc. A cliffhanger ending sets the scene for the next installment.
Reflective children will revel in this thought-provoking world. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-22440-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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