Review of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, by J. K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

hp_cursed_child_largeHarry Potter and the Cursed Child

based on an original new story by J. K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne

A new play by Jack Thorne

Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), 2016. 327 pages.

It was lovely to be back in Harry Potter’s world. This play features best friends Albus Severus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy. I liked the look at their friendship and what the wizarding world is like twenty-two years later.

But I didn’t love the story. It’s all about Time Turners and changing history — and trying to fix what happened when that goes wrong. I don’t like time travel stories. It’s far too easy to mess up the internal logic. This story completely strained believability, even in the wizarding world.

Hermione’s Time Turner in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban always brought you back one hour. The Time Turner in this story can go farther back, for only five minutes — but there’s no indication how you set the time you want to go back to.

I won’t even get started on my disagreements with what would happen because of a simple change. And the silliness of people in the original timeline waiting to see if their kids can fix a different timeline or if they would just wink out. Why wouldn’t the Time Turner just bring them back to when they left? (My son told me about the concept of San Dimas time — “San Dimas Time is used when a writer wants to add some against-the-clock tension to a Time Travel story in spite of how little sense that makes.”) After all, Hermione’s Time Turner would have been pointless if it hadn’t worked that way.

Besides that, sloppy Time Travel stories have the effect of making all the stories seem less significant. How do we know in ten more years someone else won’t go back in time to make sure Voldemort doesn’t lose? If the timeline is so fluid, what “really” happened?

Anyway, I probably shouldn’t belabor it. I have several objections to this particular plot. And the play format doesn’t read as nicely as the novel form.

But what I did like? I liked going back into Harry Potter’s world. I liked looking at what it would be like for the son of the famous Harry Potter if he got sorted into Slytherin and had as best friend the son of Draco Malfoy. I liked finding out that the sweet old Trolley Witch has an important job of keeping young wizards and witches on the Hogwarts Express and can get fearsome when crossed.

A small part of me felt like J. K. Rowling is still trying to vindicate herself for killing off Cedric Diggory. (See what would have happened if he hadn’t died!) But mostly this was a fun excursion into a beloved world. I’m looking forward to the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie coming out this Fall. But I don’t think I’d want to read the script. Since I couldn’t go see this play in London — this was the next best thing, but I don’t think I’ll be buying a copy for my own extensive Harry Potter collection.

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Review of The Girl from Everywhere, by Heidi Heilig

Fantasy, Historical, Teen Fiction Review 0

girl_from_everywhere_largeThe Girl From Everywhere

by Heidi Heilig

Greenwillow Books (HarperCollins), 2016. 454 pages.

I love the premise of this book. 16-year-old Nix has grown up on a time-traveling ship, the Temptation. Her father, Captain Slate, can Navigate anywhere – as long as he has a hand-drawn map. The map doesn’t have to even be of an actual place. With enough detail, Slate can even bring their ship to fantasy worlds.

They make their living gathering things from one time or place and selling them in another.

But Slate has an obsession. He wants to go back to 1868 Hawaii and stop Nix’s mother’s death.

Now, I didn’t quite believe Nix’s worries about that. She was afraid that if Slate stopped her mother’s death – she died in childbirth – Nix would cease to exist. Whereas her father believed Nix would be able to get to know her mother. I didn’t quite understand why Nix didn’t take that approach.

I also wasn’t crazy about Nix’s potential love interest, probably because I don’t go for the noble thief trope. Kashmir is a crew member who came on board from Vaadi Al-Maas, a location from the story of Sinbad the Sailor. He is a thief, and steals things for Nix from various places.

As the story opens, they are working to get a mythical bird that will heal illness, along with enough valuables to win an auction taking place in 2016 for an 1868 map of Hawaii.

But things go wrong, they end up in Hawaii in 1884, and there get embroiled in a plot against the king of the Hawaiian Islands.

This brings up an interesting ethical question: Is it okay to work with people planning to annex Hawaii to the United States when they know that’s going to eventually happen anyway?

Meanwhile, the novel takes on something of a heist plot, with their part involving a trip to a mythical place to pick up some terra cotta warriors. There’s another potential love interest introduced, a handsome youth who lives in Hawaii. And Nix learns about the place where she would have grown up if her mother had lived.

So you may be able to tell, I didn’t fall too hard for the characters in this book, but I still found it an intriguing premise. It was fun to see Nix comfortable with New York City in the present day as well as other places hundreds of years in the past. The rules of Navigating which were unveiled during the book were quite plausible, and I find myself hoping this is only the beginning of adventures for Nix and the Temptation.

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Review of Kingfisher, by Patricia A. McKillip

Fantasy, Fiction Review 0

kingfisher_largeKingfisher

by Patricia A. Mc.Killip

Ace Books, New York, 2016. 346 pages.

This fantasy tale begins with a young adult named Pierce who is ready to leave his sorceress mother, ready to go to the capital city and find his father, a knight. It’s also about an illegitimate prince looking for his own heritage, a chef who takes on a job her shapechanging father is opposed to, another chef who makes beautiful food that is tantalyzing but tasteless, and a princess who’s worried about her half-brother.

The fantasy world is interesting — with modern things like cars and cellphones, but a magical realm with gods and goddesses competing for power.

The unifying theme is a quest for an object of great power. No one knows where it is or what it will look like, but their heart will know it when they see it.

Along the way secrets are uncovered and there are battles between good and evil.

This is the kind of fantasy I find a little bit annoying. It’s beautifully written and evocative — but I never feel like I actually know quite what is going on or exactly how the magic works or what just happened.

I’m still glad I read it and glad to have spent time with these characters and enjoyed their quest. But it will be better for readers who don’t get hung up on details of world-building and internal logic like I do.

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Review of The Whisper, by Pamela Zagarenski

Fantasy, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

whisper_largeThe Whisper

by Pamela Zagarenski

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2015. 36 pages.
Starred Review

The Whisper is a mystical, highly symbolic picture book about imagination.

The main story is that a girl is given a book by her teacher. But when she gets home and opens the book, there are no words inside, only pictures.

As the little girl paged through the wordless book, she heard the wind blow and then a small whisper:

“Dear little girl, don’t be disappointed.
You can imagine the words.
You can imagine the stories.
Start with a few simple words and imagine from there.
Remember: beginnings, middles, and ends of stories can always be changed and imagined differently.
There are never any rules, rights, or wrongs in imagining – imagining just is.”

The whisper sounded so knowing and wise to the little girl that she opened the book to the first page and began.

From there, we see each lavishly painted page and hear the beginning of the story the little girl tells about each one.

There are definitely recurring themes in the paintings (In fact, themes that tie in with Pamela Zagarenski’s other books) which also tie in with the stuffed animals in the girl’s room, and the fox who followed her home.

And that all sounds a lot simpler than this book really is. There are layers upon layers. After a few readings, I’m still not at all sure I’ve grasped everything that’s going on.

You could also use this book as a simple Seek-and-Find book with the various recurring elements happening on each page.

But the overarching idea is this: You can make stories yourself.

And you will be glad you did.

Oh, and my favorite painting is the one of the wizard who blows bubbles in the shapes of things and fills the harbor with enormous white whales.

Imaginative!

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Review of Baba Yaga’s Assistant, by Marika McCoola, illustrated by Emily Carroll

Award Winners, Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Starred Review 0

baba_yagas_assistant_largeBaba Yaga’s Assistant

by Marika McCoola
illustrated by Emily Carroll

Candlewick Press, 2015. 132 pages.
Starred Review
2015 Cybils Elementary/Middle Grade Graphic Novels Finalist

This graphic novel is lots of fun. Masha is a modern teenage girl who has heard stories of Baba Yaga from her grandmother. Both Masha’s mother and grandmother cleverly escaped from her.

So when Masha’s father marries again and the new stepmother has a particularly bratty stepsister for Masha to babysit, Masha decides instead to answer an ad to be Baba Yaga’s assistant.

Masha has stories of Baba Yaga to guide her. She must enter Baba Yaga’s chicken-legged house, then pass three tests. But when the third test involves cooking three children for dinner, and one of those children is the naughty new stepsister – things take a turn.

I loved the way this book gives the fairy tale themes a modern twist. Such as when the stepsister throws down a washcloth in Baba Yaga’s bathroom and it begins to become a lake – so they almost drown.

Baba Yaga has a gory reputation, and despite her scary exterior, this book puts a light-hearted spin on things. Ultimately, this is the story of a clever girl finding her own way, while getting some healing for her heart.

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Review of Rebel of the Sands, by Alwyn Hamilton

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

rebel_of_the_sands_largeRebel of the Sands

by Alwyn Hamilton

Viking, 2016. 314 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s a debut fantasy novel about finding one’s identity and place in the world.

This is wonderful fantasy, but not your traditional medieval European world – this one involves Djinns, Ghouls, Skinwalkers, Nightmares, and other desert beings. We’ve got an oppressive regime and unjust society, and we start by focusing on someone caught in that injustice.

Amani is an orphan living with her uncle in a world where girls have no rights. Everything she has belongs to her uncle – and will belong to her husband after he marries her off. That event is looking harder and harder to avoid, and Amani is desperate to escape.

When the book opens, Amani is risking all the money she has managed to scrape together over the past three years to enter a shooting contest in Deadshot. If she can win the prize, she’ll be able to buy train passage to the capital city.

Amani has the shooting ability to win – but not the ability to overcome the way the contest is rigged. But during the contest she meets a mysterious foreigner who is also a skilled shooter, and she becomes part of a brawl that sets the whole place on fire.

So the next day, she’s back home in Dustwalk, tending her uncle’s shop, hoping no one recognizes her as the blue-eyed boy at the shoot-out. And who should run into her shop but the foreigner from the night before? And he’s followed by a group of soldiers, but Amani lets him hide behind the counter and covers for him. After all, he saved her life the night before. Then when it turns out he’s been shot, she returns the favor.

But while she’s tending his wounds, she hears the bells that mean a Buraqi has been sighted – a desert horse, made of desert sands. When the horse is captured and forced to stay materialized with iron shoes, the Buraqi provides a way out of Dustwalk for Amani – and the foreigner along with her.

But that’s only the beginning of the saga. She continues in an adventure across the desert. The soldiers are looking for her because she’s been seen with the foreigner. And it turns out, he’s involved with the Rebel Prince, who some say is the rightful ruler of Miraji and wouldn’t give their country over to the Gallans.

Along the way, Amani meets others in the rebellion and learns startling things about who she is and where she belongs.

This is a very satisfying fantasy adventure novel. It ends at a good place, finishing one segment of the story, with no cliffhangers (which is how I like it), but still leaves you hoping to hear more about these people and this world. It’s a debut novel, and is a wonderfully propitious start. I hope there will be many more books about Amani and Jin and desert magic and the struggle for the Rebel Prince.

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Review of The Most Wonderful Thing in the World, by Vivian French and Angela Barrett

Fantasy, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 2

most_wonderful_thing_in_the_world_largeThe Most Wonderful Thing in the World

by Vivian French
illustrated by Angela Barrett

Candlewick Press, 2015. 32 pages.
Starred Review

This is a fairy tale retold in “the time of your grandmother’s grandmother.” The beautiful paintings show clothing from the early twentieth century or late nineteenth century (I’m sure the illustrator could tell you precisely which). The paintings portray a Venice-like kingdom with a city set on a lagoon.

The king and queen decide that to find their daughter a husband, they will look for a young man who can show them the most wonderful thing in the world.

While princes and courtiers are bringing marvels to the king and queen (and here the illustrations are amazing), Princess Lucia has decided to see the city and to learn about its people.

Salvatore is the grandson of Wise Old Angelo, who gave the king and queen the advice. Salvatore brought the letter, and he’s sitting outside when the princess ventures out.

As Lucia came running out of the palace, she saw Salvatore sitting on the wall, playing with a little tabby cat.

“Excuse me, she said, pulling her cloak closer to cover her silk dress, “do you know the city?”

Salvatore smiled proudly, “Of course! I have lived in the kingdom all my life. Nobody knows the city better than I do, pretty lady. North, south, east, and west.”

“Can you show it to me?” Lucia asked. “Today?”

Salvatore was surprised. “But it would take longer than a day. Much longer.”

The princess put her hand on his coat sleeve. “Please?”

The young man bowed low. “I am Salvatore, pretty lady, and I am entirely at your service. Today, tomorrow, and the next day, until you have seen all that you want.”

“Thank you,” said the princess, and they walked away toward the heart of the city.

You can see where this is going! But the natural progression is carried out so beautifully and satisfyingly. The suitors bring some truly amazing things, but none of them is the most wonderful thing in the world. What the answer is, of course, is perfect.

The paintings in this book are very small and detailed, though truly wonderful, so it wouldn’t necessarily work for reading to a large group.

But anyone who likes an illustrated fairy tale will find a treasure in this book.

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

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Review of Imaginary Fred, by Eoin Colfer and Oliver Jeffers

Fantasy, Picture Book Review 0

imaginary_fred_largeImaginary Fred

by Eoin Colfer
illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

Harper, 2015. 48 pages.

I have to admit, I have a problem with Imaginary Friend books. Including award-winning ones. Somewhere, the mechanism (that they do have a life of their own) breaks down. My suspension of disbelief is never perfect, and I can’t thoroughly enjoy the book.

That said, this one has less lack of logic than most. And the illustrations are by Oliver Jeffers!

Perhaps I was won over that the book acknowledges right from the start that not everyone who wishes for an imaginary friend gets one. It will only happen if “the conditions are just right, and if you add a little electricity, or luck, or even magic.”

Fred is an imaginary friend who likes it when he’s summoned. He tries to be a good imaginary friend.

But no matter how hard Fred tried, the same thing happened every time. One day, his friend would find a real friend in the real world.

A friend who did not have to be ignored when grown-ups were around.

When this day came, as it always did, Fred would feel himself fade.

Eventually, the wind would blow him up to a cloud, where he’d wait to be summoned by another lonely child.

When Sam summons Fred, Fred knows he’s different. They share more interests than any friend Fred has had before. When Sam makes a real friend, Sammi, Fred is sure he’s doomed… until he meets Sammi’s imaginary friend Frieda.

From there, things don’t proceed as they have before. Eventually we learn that “friendship is friendship. Imaginary or not, the same laws apply.”

Part of the fun of this book is in the details. Sam and Fred, who both love to read, are pictured reading the authors’ books, Artemis Fowl and Lost and Found. When the four friends perform in a quartet, grown-ups in the audience are very confused. I like when the friends practice speaking French.

Okay, there are still quibbles. If there’s an “imaginary community” as we learn at the end, how is this the first friendship between two imaginary friends, anyway?

But when it comes down to it, I can overlook my quibbles, because I kept coming back to and enjoying this book. If it tried to be general it would fail, but as a story about these particular four friends? This is an entertaining story which rewards repeated readings and gets you thinking about imagination and friendship and how they come together.

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Review of The Princess in Black and the Hungry Bunny Horde, by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale

Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

hungry_bunny_horde_largeThe Princess in Black and the Hungry Bunny Horde

by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale
illustrated by LeUyen Pham

Candlewick Press, 2016. 90 pages.
Starred Review

A third book about the Princess in Black! She’s a pretty and prissy princess in pink most of the time, but she has a secret identity – she’s the Princess in Black! She fights monsters with ninja moves!

As this book begins, Princess Magnolia is going about her ordinary business, ready to have a princessly brunch with her friend Princess Sneezewort. But then her glitter-stone ring rings! The monster alarm!

When the Princess in Black arrives at the goat pasture, where the hole leading to Monsterland opens, she doesn’t see anything scary. She sees a whole throng of fluffy purple bunnies.

The bunnies don’t look threatening. In fact, they look adorably cute. But there are hundreds of them. And they are terribly hungry. They eat all the grass in the goat pasture. Then they eat an entire tree. They eat a goat horn. They have their eyes on the Princess in Black.

In this case, it is Blacky the Pony (the secret identity of Frimplepants the Unicorn) who saves the day. The bunnies of the hungry bunny horde all speak the language of Cuteness.

Cute sniffles. Cute wiggles.

Cute hops. Only other cute animals could understand.

And that was why Blacky understood.

Because Blacky was not just Blacky the pony.

He was also Frimplepants.

Frimplepants the unicorn.

And Frimplepants the unicorn was as cute as they come.

This book came in at just the right time, when I was scheduled to read to a third grade class on Read Across America Day, and this book seemed perfect. Third graders might believe themselves to be too sophisticated for picture books (even though I know better). This book has 12 chapters and 90 pages. The text I quoted above covers three pages, and there are illustrations on every page (or at least every spread). So the book is accessible for someone who hasn’t been reading long but is ready for chapters – and there’s absolutely nothing boring about it.

And what I love about it is that the story is good enough that younger children who can’t read yet will love it, and older children who are completely capable of reading longer chapters will enjoy it as well. And adults won’t get tired of reading it either. There is much humor in the situation of cute bunnies creating such havoc.

Why should something easy to read and simple to understand be boring? The Princess in Black is the opposite of that.

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Review of To Hold the Bridge, by Garth Nix

Fantasy, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

to_hold_the_bridge_largeTo Hold the Bridge

by Garth Nix

Harper, 2015. 400 pages.
Starred Review

This is a collection of stories by the brilliant Garth Nix. Based on the copyright page, most were published previously, but not necessarily in the United States. (Garth Nix lives in Australia.)

They are uniformly well-written, but there is a tremendous variety of topics. The title story is set in the Old Kingdom world of Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen, Across the Wall, and Clariel. There are also stories set in the world of his other novels A Confusion of Princes and Shade’s Children.

But there are a wide variety of things going on here. His magic always was original. There is a dark twist in a lot of the tales, but this book makes for tremendously enjoyable reading.

I liked the story about the granddaughter of William the Conqueror and the Sword in the Stone. It turns out the magic of the Britons, holly and forest magic, conflicted with the iron magic of the Norman conquerors. This story is an example of Garth Nix’s complicated magical rules which he communicates to the reader through the eyes of his characters who already understand it. He never descends into expository hell, the bane of many fantasy writers. And he can even pull this off in short stories.

Besides revisiting his own worlds, he also goes into the worlds of The Martian Chronicles, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Hellboy, and Sherlock Holmes — introducing his brother Sir Magnus Holmes, who is a specialist in occult magic. I especially liked the retelling of Rapunzel, where Rapunzel cleverly exploits the requirements of how a witch must treat a guest. Though the witch does some clever exploitation herself.

There are two vampire stories and a zombie story (which is also a unicorn story) and a story about a witches’ school (another one that’s especially good). I did mention there’s a wide variety in these tales. It took me a long time to read, because each story is so satisfying in itself, it’s easy to stop at the end of a story.

A magnificent collection by a master world-builder who also knows how to show you the hearts of his characters.

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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