Humor and heart entwine in this hilarious and wildly creative adventure.
Stunned to learn she’s a witch, trans girl Rebecca Slugg goes questing for magical ink ingredients to free her bespelled mother.
Though Becca yearns for an exciting life, her “timid little noodle” of a mother, who runs the Cape Disappointment Beach Inn, seems determined to keep things as boring as possible. Then dramatic Aunt Malatrice—previously unknown to Becca—swoops in, casting a spell that gets Mom to sign a document allowing Malatrice’s Ascension to Witch-Queen. An astonished Becca learns that witches exist, they create magic with ink, and that she herself is a witch. Also, the tarantula living by the dumpsters is her mother’s familiar, Natalya, and the ice troll Oddvar lives in the motel’s ice machine. With her robotlike mother stripped of her free will, Becca goes in search of mermaid caviar, powdered troll tooth, and the Witch-Queen’s treasure. With these items, Natalya promises, they can make ink to restore Becca’s mother to normality—if they don’t die in the process, that is. This fast-paced, laugh-out-loud fantasy will appeal to fans of Roald Dahl and Terry Pratchett. Overflowing with evocative sensory descriptions, the top-notch worldbuilding includes unique creatures and locations and a creative magic system. The characters are distinct, flawed, and delightful—or delightfully awful. Adding thoughtful ballast to the hijinks are environmental messages, Becca’s feelings about being trans, and questions about what it might mean that she sometimes agrees with the power-hungry Malatrice. Human characters read white.
Humor and heart entwine in this hilarious and wildly creative adventure. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316585934
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.
In Florence’s middle-grade fantasy novel, a young girl’s heart is tested in the face of an evil, spreading Darkness.
Eleven-year-old Lydia, “freckle-cheeked and round-eyed, with hair the color of pine bark and fair skin,” is struggling with the knowledge that she has reached the age to apprentice as an herbalist. Lydia is reluctant to leave her beloved, magical Mulberry Glen and her cozy Housetree in the woods—she’ll miss Garder, the Glen’s respected philosopher; her fairy guardian Pit; her human friend Livy; and even the mischievous part-elf, part-imp, part-human twins Zale and Zamilla. But the twins go missing after hearing of a soul-sapping Darkness that has swallowed a forest and is creeping into minds and engulfing entire towns. They have secretly left to find a rare fruit that, it is said, will stop the Darkness if thrown into the heart of the mountain that rises out of the lethal forest. Lydia follows, determined to find the twins before they, too, fall victim to the Darkness. During her journey, accompanied by new friends, she gradually realizes that she herself has a dangerous role to play in the quest to stop the Darkness. In this well-crafted fantasy, Florence skillfully equates the physical manifestation of Darkness with the feelings of insecurity and powerlessness that Lydia first struggles with when thinking of leaving the Glen. Such negative thoughts grow more intrusive the closer she and her friends come to the Darkness—and to Lydia’s ultimate, powerfully rendered test of character, which leads to a satisfyingly realistic, not quite happily-ever-after ending. Highlights include a delightfully haunting, reality-shifting library and a deft sprinkling of Latin throughout the text; Pit’s pet name for Lydia is mea flosculus (“my little flower”). Fine-lined ink drawings introducing each chapter add a pleasing visual element to this well-grounded fairy tale.
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781956393095
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Waxwing Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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