JUDE BANKS, SUPERHERO

Almost a year after his sister Katie dies, Jude Banks turns himself in for her murder.

Jude is 12. Katie, less than a year younger, had been accelerated at school and started seventh grade alongside him. Before her death, the siblings were inseparable; afterward, Jude and his mother and father are awash with grief. Jude starts therapy and joins a sibling loss group where he makes friends with Clementine, who, like Jude, feels responsible for her sister’s death. Hood, whose own experience of tragic loss has informed some of her previous books, writes well, but she does not handle this subject matter appropriately for the target reading audience. The book slides back and forth unevenly in time, making it difficult for young readers to track Jude’s healing. Jude’s voice never sounds like that of a modern middle schooler—he’s alternately too innocent or too adult. His parents are one-dimensional. The book focuses relentlessly on awful details of grief, from Jude’s descriptively imagining his sister’s autopsy to a painful revelation about a baby that died to riffs on strange ways children have been killed. There is never any emotional let-up. Worst of all, when one character attempts suicide, several aspects of the narrative directly contraindicate best practices for safely discussing the topic in order to minimize the risk of suicide contagion. Many books have covered this subject matter well for this age group; young readers would do better elsewhere.

Tackles highly sensitive subjects without the necessary care.