DOWER

Over the summer before sixth grade, Cassidy Aoki travels to visit grandparents she barely knows thanks to a family estrangement.

Cassidy’s Japanese paternal grandfather has never fully accepted his son’s marriage to a Black American woman. Her parents plan a visit with the elder Aokis, who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s, in hopes of healing the rift. Cassidy finds solace in their garden—and discovers an uncanny ability to speak with plants (and her grandparents’ dog). Dower, a magical creature that’s part dog and part flower (“Dog and flower equals Dower”)—unmistakably symbolic of Cassidy’s mixed-race identity—emerges from the soil. Things heat up when the garden is threatened by a proposed corporate development. A courtroom battle and student protest bring everyone together for a dramatic finale. The uneven match between the young protagonist and stilted academic prose creates a persistent disconnect. The childlike nature of the fantasy elements clashes with the advanced vocabulary, while the lessons are stated outright (one chapter is entitled “The Moral to the Story”) rather than emerging organically. This lack of subtlety combined with lengthy explanatory passages make this a taxing read. Despite the message of racial inclusion, a Black girl named LaTrice, is described in ways that evoke harmful stereotypes: She’s “the biggest girl” in class, and the “tight clothes” she wears make her “seem even bigger.” Additionally, she’s “bossy” and “no one could quite understand the cause of her displaced anger.”

Marred by heavy-handed messaging and an unclear audience.