Frights and fun in equal measure.
Having a 7-foot-tall blood-sucking secret friend understandably complicates 12-year-old Jorge’s life.
To kick off their middle-grade series, celebrity comedian Lopez and his co-author Calejo send young Chicano Angeleno Jorge Lopez to his abuelos in remotest New Mexico—where, as if being threatened by his new school’s deranged White principal in an office festooned with animal trophies isn’t scary enough, he stumbles on a toothy and terrifying monster in the local woods. Carter, as the cryptid introduces himself, turns out to be just a lonely young chupacabra separated from his family and hiding out from both human hunters and also a questing pack of vicious vampire dogs called dips. In a narrative punctuated with wisecracks and flavored with Spanish phrases and slang, Jorge’s struggles with his own tendency to respond smartly to taunts and bullying parallel strenuous efforts to keep his new friend’s existence secret. His failure at both (though by the end he does seem a little better at impulse control) drives a plot laden with both comical situations and hair-raising brushes with death…including no less than two near misses for Jorge from the aforementioned school official. By the end, though, Carter has been bundled off to safety in Mexico, and Jorge has two staunch allies at school in vegan activist Liza, who reads as Black, and Ernie, identified as Native American. Dialogue and punchlines spill over into Gutiérrez’s droll illustrations.
Frights and fun in equal measure. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-46597-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship.
A young tennis champion becomes the target of revenge.
In this sequel to Legacy and the Queen (2019), Legacy Petrin and her friends Javi and Pippa have returned to Legacy’s home province and the orphanage run by her father. With her friends’ help, she is in training to defend her championship when they discover that another player, operating under the protection of High Consul Silla, is presenting herself as Legacy. She is so convincing that the real Legacy is accused of being an imitation. False Legacy has become a hero to the masses, further strengthening Silla’s hold, and it becomes imperative to uncover and defeat her. If Legacy is to win again, she must play her imposter while disguised as someone else. Winning at tennis is not just about money and fame, but resisting Silla’s plans to send more young people into brutal mines with little hope of better lives. Legacy will have to overcome her fears and find the magic that allowed her to claim victory in the past. This story, with its elements of sports, fantasy, and social consciousness that highlight tensions between the powerful and those they prey upon, successfully continues the series conceived by late basketball superstar Bryant. As before, the tennis matches are depicted with pace and spirit. Legacy and Javi have brown skin; most other characters default to White.
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949520-19-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Granity Studios
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
An enthralling fantasy debut exploring exploitation by those in power.
Will 12-year-old Nura be able to outsmart the trickster jinn and save herself and her friends?
Nura lives in the fictional Pakistani town of Meerabagh, where she has worked mining mica to help support her family of five—her mother, herself, and her three younger siblings—since her father’s death. In the mines she has the company of her best friend, Faisal, who is teased by other kids for his stutter, and she enjoys small pleasures like splurging on gulab jamun. Although Maa wants Nura to stop working and attend school, she has no interest in classroom learning and hopes to save up to send her younger siblings to school instead so they can break the family’s cycle of poverty. Following a mining accident in which Faisal and others are lost in the rubble, Nura goes to the rescue. In her quest, she is plunged into the magical, glittering jinn realm, where nothing is as it seems. The author seamlessly weaves into the worldbuilding of the story commentary on real-life problems such as the ravages of child labor and systems that perpetuate inequities. An informative author’s note further explores present-day global cycles of oppression as well as the life-changing power of education. This action-packed story set in a Muslim community moves at a fast pace, with evocative writing that brings the fantasy world to life and lyrical imagery to describe emotions.
An enthralling fantasy debut exploring exploitation by those in power. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5795-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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