{"id":45802,"date":"2025-11-03T20:57:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T01:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=45802"},"modified":"2025-11-03T20:57:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T01:57:16","slug":"review-of-creaky-acres-by-calista-brill-nilah-magruder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=45802","title":{"rendered":"Review of Creaky Acres, by Calista Brill & Nilah Magruder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Creaky Acres<\/em><\/p>\n

by Calista Brill and Nilah Magruder<\/p>\n

Kokila, 2025. 268 pages.
\nReview written October 15, 2025, from a copy sent to me by the publisher.
\nStarred Review<\/p>\n

Creaky Acres<\/em> is a sweet graphic novel about moving – with a horse. Nora is in upper elementary school, and as the book opens, we see her saying good-by to friends at school – and then much more warmly to her friends at the barn. Her horse, Hay Fever, has many blue ribbons by his stall.<\/p>\n

Their first stop at their new home is Hay Fever’s new barn, Creaky Acres. Nora is not impressed. There’s a goat and possums roaming around, and one kid rides on a cow. And they don’t even go to riding events. Nora’s the only Black girl in the whole school.<\/p>\n

So this is a book about learning to love a new place, and it’s got all kinds of charm. Although Nora has won plenty of riding events in the past and takes care to do things right, now she’s got a persistent problem of not keeping her eyes up when she goes over jumps.<\/p>\n

We watch Nora make quirky new friends and come to terms with Creaky Acres, and even lead a team to a riding event. This is one of those books that will leave you with a smile.<\/p>\n

calistabrill.com<\/a>
\nnilahmagruder.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on Sonderbooks<\/a> at: www.sonderbooks.com\/Childrens_Fiction\/creaky_acres.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.<\/p>\n

Subscribe<\/a> for more reviews and talk about books.<\/p>\n

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Creaky Acres by Calista Brill and Nilah Magruder Kokila, 2025. 268 pages. Review written October 15, 2025, from a copy sent to me by the publisher. Starred Review Creaky Acres is a sweet graphic novel about moving – with a horse. Nora is in upper elementary school, and as the book opens, we see her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,21,37,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childrens-fiction-review","category-contemporary","category-graphic-novel","category-starred-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45802"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45841,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45802\/revisions\/45841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}