A compelling tale of love, loss, and myth.
San Diego boy Kai Sosa’s older sister, Cali, was a championship swimmer; two years ago, she disappeared in a dense ocean fog and is presumed dead.
When Kai is recruited by Cali’s elite swim team, he faces the pressure of living up to her legacy while navigating his grief and struggling to reclaim his competitive edge in the sport. The coaches have an unorthodox approach that leaves Kai and his teammates questioning whether they’ll be ready to compete. Amid this turmoil, Kai discovers an overdue library book that Cali borrowed, The Elusive Island of California. It’s filled with lore about Queen Califia and a mythical submerged island. The book’s tales of gold, a Library of Despair and Sorrow, and a mysterious underwater realm strike an eerie chord with Kai. As vivid dreams and sleepwalking episodes draw him to the ocean, Mexican American Kai begins to wonder if the legendary island could actually exist and if the myths might hold clues to Cali’s disappearance. Blending the emotional depth of grief with the intrigue of mythology, Ryan’s story explores the intersection of family, resilience, and natural weather cycles in Southern California. The magic of the Califia legend is tempered by the reality of life after loss, and both aspects of the story are richly detailed. The navy blue font and Cepeda’s striking illustrations complement the uniquely beautiful story. (This review was updated for clarity.)
A compelling tale of love, loss, and myth. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-13)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781338068559
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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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