by Marti Dumas ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 10, 2022
A delightful start to a fresh series.
A young African American witch learns that magic makes life quite complicated.
School is out in New Orleans, and Hasani Schexnayder-Jones is grateful for summer vacation. She’s free to work on her YouTube channel, MakeupontheCheapCheap. Unfortunately, the free time also allows Hasani to see her dad’s new girlfriend, Sandy, flaunting herself all over Instagram. She cannot understand why her parents separated, and after learning that Sandy has moved in with her dad, Hasani’s magic springs to life in a burst of emotion. Les Belles Demoiselles: Finir l’École des Sorcières, the premier charm school for witches, catches wind of Hasani’s raw magical promise and invites her to enroll. Hasani believes this will be a welcome distraction, but coming from a nonmagical family, she encounters a frosty roommate, unspoken rules that everyone else knows, and magic that she struggles to control. Even worse, there’s barely any signal to upload her YouTube videos. As she slowly learns the ways of magic, Hasani tries to apply it to her problems, but her meddling is not without consequences. When her favorite subscriber goes missing, Hasani must muster all her talents to find her before it’s too late. Dumas invites readers into a wonderful world of witchcraft that highlights the contributions of the diaspora; the infusion of Creole heritage and the acknowledgement of enslavement grounds this world without dimming its light. Readers will relate to the struggles of standing out, feeling inadequate, and accepting change.
A delightful start to a fresh series. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4197-5561-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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by Isaac Rudansky ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 4, 2025
A half-baked jumble of poorly connected themes, incidents, and tropes.
Eleven-year-old Georgie sets out to the rescue after seeing his dad snatched into thin air by a hideous figure.
In a confusing debut that reads like a first draft, the kidnapping impels the young slingshot expert to go from doggedly enduring vicious bullying at school to intrepidly plunging after his father through a portal to Scatterplot, an otherworldly realm where the memories of everyone in New York are uploaded by omnilingual Scribes. Classmates Apurva Aluwhalia (who’s cued South Asian) and Roscoe Harris (who reads Black and is confined to a role that’s largely limited to comic relief), each motivated by their own concerns, follow white-presenting Georgie on his adventure. In Scatterplot, they must remain alert for the “tribe” of “bad people” called Altercockers, formed by the exiled Rollie D. Meanwhile, Flint Eldritch, the menacing figure who was responsible for Georgie’s father’s disappearance, is bent on using the Aetherquill, a magical pen that can rewrite reality in unpredictable ways, to replace all those recorded memories with fake ones. In a story that’s marred by stilted dialogue, flat characterization, and awkward turns of phrase, Georgie and his friends, along with Scatterplot siblings Edie and Ore, embark on a quest to save both his father and the entire realm. The puss-oozing, misshapen villain Flint, crawling with bugs, does at least provide a memorably lurid element of horror. The novel ends with an abrupt cliffhanger.
A half-baked jumble of poorly connected themes, incidents, and tropes. (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798886453164
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 14, 2013
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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