A wordy but inventive mashup of mythology and chess.
The princess of Chess Mountain must hide on Earth to avoid a war between the gods.
Kassie, an athletic, intelligent princess, lives on Chess Mountain among living wooden chess pieces who animate the chessboards of gods. She’s the daughter of Mars, the Roman god of war and king of Chess Mountain, and Caïssa, a powerful dryad and queen. Kassie is eager to celebrate her twelfth birthday and embark on her mythic quest, which will elevate her to god status. Unfortunately, when Dimitri, son of neighboring god of sports, Euphron, disappears, Euphron declares war on Chess Mountain, and Mars sends Kassie through a chess-puzzle portal to Earth with a knight chess piece named Maurice and an important book of chess solutions. After landing, Kassie, who on her home world glows and has inhumanly bronze skin, becomes a white-presenting brown-haired girl, and Maurice turns from a horse to a fedora-wearing clotheshorse. Kassie must integrate into an inexplicably chess-focused classroom in a culturally diverse elementary school in Queens. Light comedy centered on Kassie’s inexperience with snow, pizza, and cars abounds, as do lesser plots about a villainous classmate, Hunter, and suspiciously named teacher, Mr. Mercury, who seems intent on disrespecting the planet Mars, which makes Kassie think she’s been discovered. When the identity of the missing god Dimitri is revealed, Kassie must rely on her diplomacy to resolve the political crisis caused by his absence. In Winifred’s middle-grade novel, the prose can be stiff and protracted, and the book seems long for its reading level. The use of Roman mythology, however, is entertainingly original, and the chess-themed and idiosyncratic worldbuilding will excite young readers’ imaginations. In fact, even more can be done to capitalize on the chess setting of Chess Mountain. Despite humor and a happy ending, the story has a solemn bent, with the cast fulfilling preordained mythical roles. Galstyan’s occasional lighthearted, simple pen-and-ink cartoon illustrations don’t flesh out the fantasy visuals much; a map of Chess Mountain appears at the front of the book. There is a short chess vocabulary page, but most of the narrative’s descriptions of play expect readers to already understand the game.
A wordy but inventive mashup of mythology and chess.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 9798986967509
Page Count: 216
Publisher: The Enrichment Connection
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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