A ghostly tale with a historical twist.
Two friends stumble upon an abandoned cemetery in the woods behind their houses.
Best friends Iris and Daniel, both African American, are having a hard year. At school, Iris is struggling to get the recognition she craves as captain of the step team, and at home, her 4-year-old sister steals their parents’ attention. Daniel’s father is recently deceased, and he feels the need to be extra careful so his mom and grandmother don’t experience loss again. Brown’s portrayals of Iris’ angst and Daniel’s grief are deftly written and accessible for readers. Despite their challenges, the friends know they can count on each other, so when Iris begs Daniel to come outside in the middle of the night to experience the first snow, he ignores his grandmother’s superstitious warning about the spirits of the snow who prey on children and joins her. After a snowball fight in the woods, Iris makes a snow angel and realizes she is actually lying on top of a grave. The headstone reveals that the grave’s occupant is a girl named Avery, who was 12, just like them. After that first night, Avery haunts Iris, compelling Iris to return to her and right the wrongs that left her in limbo. The book struggles with pacing, but the historical information about school desegregation, segregated cemeteries, and the Great Migration are welcome, unique additions.
A ghostly tale with a historical twist. (Paranormal adventure. 10-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-31724-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map.
A girl who delights in the macabre harnesses her inherited supernatural ability.
It’s not just her stark white hair that makes 11-year-old Zee Puckett stand out in nowheresville Knobb’s Ferry. She’s a storyteller, a Mary Shelley fangirl, and is being raised by her 21-year-old high school dropout sister while their father looks for work upstate (cue the wayward glances from the affluent demography). Don’t pity her, because Zee doesn’t acquiesce to snobbery, bullying, or pretty much anything that confronts her. But a dog with bleeding eyes in a cemetery gives her pause—momentarily—because the beast is just the tip of the wicked that has this way come to town. Time to get some help from ghosts. The creepy supernatural current continues throughout, intermingled with very real forays into bullying (Zee won’t stand for it or for the notion that good girls need to act nice), body positivity, socio-economic status and social hierarchy, and mental health. This debut from a promising writer involves a navigation of caste systems, self-esteem, and villainy that exists in an interesting world with intriguing characters, but they receive a flat, two-dimensional treatment that ultimately makes the book feel like one is learning a ho-hum lesson in morality. Zee is presumably White (as is her rich-girl nemesis–cum-comrade, Nellie). Her best friend, Elijah, is cued as Black. Warning: this just might spur frenzied requests for Frankenstein.
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map. (Supernatural. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304460-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A chilling debut—like the Seeker, a tale that doesn’t let you go.
Justin and his friends play their last game of hide-and-seek at their friend Zee’s not-so-welcome–home party.
Zee had gone missing one week after Justin’s mother passed away just one year ago, and the party is celebrating his return. But the emaciated Zee is acting strangely, mumbling rhymes about a Seeker that will take them all. Shortly after the party, one by one, Justin’s other friends begin to disappear. It doesn’t take long for the remaining members of the crew to figure out that Zee’s strange behavior may be connected to the disappearances. Justin, Nia, and Lyric set out on a trail of clues and possible suspects, hoping to find their missing peers. No sooner do the details of the mystery begin to come to light than Justin, the last of the group, is unwillingly transported into the realm of Nowhere. In this parallel universe, the Seeker keeps children hostage, feeding off of their fears. This dark nail-biter, set in a small Tennessee town and featuring a largely African American cast (Lyric is the only white kid), weaves a creepy spin on a childhood game that quickly slips into a Stephen King–esque tale of horror. Can the children trapped in Nowhere gather as allies to evade the Seeker and get home?
A chilling debut—like the Seeker, a tale that doesn’t let you go. (Horror. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-58362-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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