No Time Like Now by Naz Kutub

Posted on February 7, 2024 by Katy K.
Cover of No Time Like Now by Naz Kutub

No Time Like Now
by Naz Kutub

Bloomsbury, 2024

ISBN 9781547609284

Review copy kindly sent by the publisher.

16-year-old Hazeem has spent this year following his father’s death wallowing in depression, getting out of bed to make sure his mom eats and to visit his grandmother. His grief has given him a superpower – adding years to people’s lives. He’s used it to add years to his hamster, Mary Shelley – his only remaining friend now that he’s saved the lives of his three former best friends, and now none of them will talk to him anymore. 

When he tries to save the life of one more beloved person, Time shows up with a golden chronosphere, wearing an orange jumpsuit and looking like a young Sandra Bullock. They say that he’s now given away more years than he has and is about to end the world if he can’t take them back from someone. Though Time wants Hazeem to make a quick and easy choice, Time also has no sense of what it means to be human and why Hazeem cares to much. Surely if Hazeem visits his friends in the past, it will both help him to figure out what to do and help Time to understand him. With Mary Shelley in her hamster front-pack, they set out to look at the past and potential futures. These are moments he’d rather never think about again – the embarrassing scene where Hazeem confessed his love to his long-time crush, and separate averted tragedies with his overly-sheltered friend Holly and his proudly nonbinary friend Yamany, whom I pictured looking like a brown Jonathan van Ness. 

For those who are fans of time travel – for most of the book, Hazeem is watching the past and brief glimpses of futures without being able to change anything, though there is a bit of him trying one day multiple ways. There are a lot of enormous, hard feelings here – and lots of Hazeem realizing that he really wasn’t as great a friend as he thought he was. While there is a lot of sadness, I appreciated that neither he nor his friends were perfect, all of them finding ways to reach for their true dreams and selves. Time’s goofiness and little Mary Shelley keep the book from wallowing as much as Hazeem does at the beginning. The ending is cathartic and hopeful. This is perfect for teens looking for stories of real people with a semi-magical push towards solving their problems. 

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2023 In Review – by the Numbers

Posted on January 26, 2024 by Katy K.

Every year since 2014, I’ve tried to do an audit of my reading, as well as a list of my favorite books of the year. It’s my way of keeping myself accountable,

2023 Overview

Graph of my 2023 reading trends 187 books read, 39 reviewed, 91 of them rated 8, and 39 of them rated 9 or 10. I also listened to 13 audiobooks with my kid.
I read 187 books in 2023. I reviewed 39 of them, rated 39 of them 9 or above (not the same ones I reviewed, though!), 91 of them 8. I listened to 13 books with the one teen who will still has regular car time with me.
Pie chart of where I got the books I read in 2023 - 50% from the library in print, 29% from Libby, 9% from Hoopla, and 5% purchased.
This is my third year splitting out the digital library loans (Libby and hoopla) from the physical books. My total library reading including those was 88.8%, up 9% from last year. I accepted a lot fewer review copies this year – apologies to the many authors whose offers I turned down due to feeling overwhelmed. 
Pie chart of the formats I read in 2023 - 50% print, 33% audio, 10% ebook, and 8% graphic novels (vs. prose print.)
The big change from last year is audiobooks, which jumped up from 24% to 33%. Ebook reading also made a slight gain.

What I Read

Pie chart of the genres I read in 2023 - 72% fantasy, 11% realistic, 7% nonfiction, 4% romance, 2% each historical and science fiction.
I read even more fantasy than usual last year! It’s probably because I did the Cybils summer reading group.
Pie chart of the audience the books I read were written for - 66% middle grade, 17% adult, 16% teen, and less than 1% early chapter and picture books.
This is nearly the same as last year. Once again, I didn’t track my picture book reading. 

The Authors

Pie chart of the ethnicity of the authors I read in 2023 - 54% white, 13% Asian, 11% Black, 7% Latinx, 4% Middle Eastern, 3% each South Asian and Native, with tiny percentages of books with multiple authors.
Hey, a 1% increase in reading by authors of color, two years in a row! My reading of Native and Middle Eastern authors was finally large enough for Google sheets to give them labels. 
A pie chart of the ethnicity of the authors of the books I both read and reviewed in 2023 - 41% white, 15% each Asian and Black, 8% South Asian, 5% each Middle Eastern and Latinx, and 3% Native.
Just for comparison, since most of you only know about the books I share here.
A map of the home countries of the authors I read in 2023, including the US, Canada, Ireland, England, Denmark, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
Just for fun, a map of where the authors are from – 14 different countries
Graph of the genders of my 2023 reading - 82% Female, 12% Male, 2.7 % Nonbinary, with some small percentages of partnerships.
A slight increase in reading of books by both female and nonbinary authors. The tiny unlabeled slices are multi-gender author partnerships.

The Characters

Pie chart of the ethnicity of the characters in my 2023 reading - 38% white, 13% Asian, 11% Black, 8% animal (mostly dragons), 7% Latinx, 55% Middle Eastern, 4% South Asian, and 2.8% Native/Indigenous.
White characters are down to 38% of my reading from 43% in 2022, if still higher than my all-time low of 34% in 2020.
Chart of the numbers of books I read with character representation of diversity besides ethnicity - 35 with religious diversity, 52 with economic diversity, 15 with physical disabilities or neurodiversity, and 36 LGBTQ+.
I tried yet another way of tracking other character diversity this year, with mixed results. I counted religion if the MCs practiced any religion besides Christianity, Economic if they were low income, Ability for both physical disabilities and non-neurotypical characters. I’ll note that there are a lot of people struggling to make ends meet in fantasy books. 

I’ve been doing these graphs for ten whole years now – here they are from 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014. I think I should do some sort of retrospective! As always, if you know of any middle grade or teen books, especially fantasy books, that would help me round out the diversity of my reading, please let me know! And if you have thoughts on these stats or other things you’d like to see, let me know in the comments.

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Cruzita and the Mariacheros by Ashley Granillo for MCBD 2024

Posted on January 25, 2024 by Katy K.

It’s time to celebrate Multicultural Children’s Book Day again! I’m reviewing this book here – be sure to head over to the website for lots of book giveaways, hundreds of reviews, and for information about the online party. 

Cruzita and the Mariacheros
by Ashley Granillo

Lerner, April 2, 2024

ISBN 979-8-7656-0850-0

Review copy kindly provided by the publisher through Netgalley.

Cruzita, a second-generation Mexican-American, is more comfortable with the American side of her heritage. She can’t speak Spanish and doesn’t really care for the traditional music her family sometimes plays. She and her best friend Kelli, who is white and lives in a gated neighborhood, share a dream: to go to the big music theme park near them, Encore Island, and win the pop music contest there. She and Kelli have big plans for her to sing one of her favorite 90s songs there. 

But Cruzita and her family are also reeling from the recent loss of Cruzita’s great-uncle, Tio Chuy. Tio Chuy ran the family bakery, now struggling without his baking, and was also the adult that Cruzita felt closest to. Now Cruzita is expected to spend her summer helping out in the bakery instead of having fun – learning to roll tortillas by hand and greeting the Spanish-speaking customers – all while her cousins are off on vacation in Mexico. She’s even more crushed when her frustrated mother takes away her beloved CD player and tablet and grounds her to punish her for her bad attitude – and says they can’t afford to go to Encore Island at all. 

Her Grandmother attempts to come to her rescue by making an arrangement for Cruzita to take free mariachi lessons, using the family violin. Thrown in with a group of much more experienced kids, all of whom can sing the Spanish words to the songs, Cruzita is horrified. Eventually, though, she learns to enjoy the music and makes friends with some of the other kids in the class. Together, they might be able boost her grandmother’s spirits and find a way to save the bakery – if Cruzita can figure out where her loyalties lie. Because Kelli is jealous of Cruzita’s new friends and dismissive of the music – and how can Cruzita give up on her oldest friend? 

I personally have always liked traditional music more than pop music, but I’m guessing that most kids will have a lot of sympathy for Cruzita. There were some tough parts here when Cruzita was getting negative feedback from her parents and aunt and from her best friend at once – but I appreciated her improving her relationship with her parents and building new friendships at the mariachi school. I really enjoyed the vivid descriptions of the baked goods and the fragrant little citrus grove outside the bakery, something I would love to experience in real life. Her struggles trying to fit into Mexican-American culture when she doesn’t speak Spanish were reminiscent of those in Marcus Vega Doesn’t Speak Spanish by Pablo Cartaya. This is a solid choice for kids who dream of stardom, as well as shining a light on the difficulty of growing up between cultures. 

Here are some of my previous MCBD posts:

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BLOG TOUR – Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu

Posted on January 17, 2024 by Katy K.

Dear readers, I am so excited to once again be part of the blog tour for Anne Ursu’s latest book! This is one braids together a realistic middle school story with one of unease and slowly developing horror. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Cover of Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu

The house seemed to sit apart from the others on Katydid Street, silent and alone, like it didn’t fit among them. For Violet Hart — whose family is about to move into the house on Katydid Street — very little felt like it fit anymore. Like their old home, suddenly too small since her mother remarried and the new baby arrived. Or Violet’s group of friends, which, since they started middle school, isn’t enough for Violet’s best friend, Paige. Everything seemed to be changing at once. But sometimes, Violet tells herself, change is okay. 

That is, until Violet sees her new room. The attic bedroom in their new house is shadowy, creaky, and wrapped in old yellow wallpaper covered with a faded tangle of twisting vines and sickly flowers. And then, after moving in, Violet falls ill — and does not get better. As days turn into weeks without any improvement, her family growing more confused and her friends wondering if she’s really sick at all, she finds herself spending more time alone in the room with the yellow wallpaper, the shadows moving in the corners, wrapping themselves around her at night.

And soon, Violet starts to suspect that she might not be alone in the room at all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author Anne Ursu

Anne Ursu is the author of acclaimed novels The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, The Lost Girl, Breadcrumbs, and The Real Boy, among others. Her work has been selected as a National Book Award nominee, a Kirkus Prize finalist, and as a best book of the year by Parents Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com, and School Library Journal. She lives in Minneapolis with her family and an unruly herd of cats. Find Anne online at anneursu.com.

MY TAKE

Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu. Walden Pond Press, 2024. ISBN 978-0062275158. Read from an e-ARC.

“Perhaps [the house] was wary of the other houses, or perhaps it was the other houses that wished to keep their distance from it. If only houses could talk, then one of them could tell us which it was. Of course, if houses could talk, they could also lie.”

From Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu

It’s clear here that the house is hiding a secret… most especially in the attic room that Violet’s older teen sister, Mia, deemed too creepy and therefore leaves for Violet to sleep in. Yet any supernatural elements here are suspicions, and mostly improbably suspicions at that, so that after this introduction, the story carries on with mostly realistic elements until it’s suddenly very much no longer realistic.  Still, the delicious language keeps that element constantly in mind, as in this phrase describing Mia’s newly pale skin: “…maybe she had absorbed so much light from her computer monitor that her skin itself now gave off an uncanny glow.”

Violet’s bumpy transition to middle school coincides with an illness that mysteriously refuses to go away, aligning her unseen malady with the barely-seen shadow in her new bedroom, both becoming more and more frightening as the story continues. This forces Violet to reach far out of her comfort zone on multiple levels and leads to a gripping final action scene. Though the title and the cover focus on the shadow in the room, Violet’s friend and family relationships are also shifting and very important, with plenty to appeal to readers of realistic fiction, and very satisfying conclusions to the multiple plotlines.  It shines a light on the insidiousness of invisible illnesses – as well as making it seem like there might be something lurking in the older house around the corner from you. 

BLOG TOUR STOPS

January 16 Nerdy Book Club @nerdybookclub

January 17 A Library Mama (@librarymama)

January 18 Charlotte’s Library (@charlotteslibrary)

January 21 Teachers Who Read (@teachers_read)

January 22 Bluestocking Thinking (@bluesockgirl)

        ReadWonder (@patrickontwit)

January 23 A Foodie Bibliophile In Wanderlust (@bethshaum)

January 25 Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers (@grgenius)

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Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans by Isi Hendrix

Posted on January 13, 2024 by Katy K.

This is the last book I read for the Cybils this year – and it’s a lovely play on standard magic school tropes. It’s from Nigerian-British author Isi Hendrix, and has a lovely UK cover as well. 

Cover of Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans by Isi Hendrix

Adia Kelbara
and the Circle of Shamans by Isi Hendrix

Balzer + Bray, 2023

ISBN 978-0063266339

Read from a library copy. 

In this story set in a Nigerian-inspired fantasy world, 12-year-old orphan Adia has been miserable ever since her cousin, the one person who was kind to her, disappeared while they were at the lake together.  Now her aunt and uncle blame her for his death and are pretty sure that she is an ogbanje, a demon-possessed child.  Adia’s main goals are to find a way to lift this curse, and not to be forced to join the cult of the Bright Father, which ritually drugs its followers as well as urging them to be as white as snow – which Adia feels is ridiculous in a country of dark-skinned people.  Her solution has been to find a placement for her year of practicality in the kitchens at the Academy of Shamans – the Academy itself being only for rich people.  She flees – followed by her cat Bubbles – after an especially unfortunate incident with the missionaries at her village.  

Once at the Academy, though, it’s immediately obvious that the Academy itself is in trouble. The revered Academy itself is in a state of dreadful disrepair, with mismatched building pieces, and walls and furniture that try to throw the students and teachers out.  Though she doesn’t know how, Adia is able to tell immediately that everyone there is a fraud, only pretending to have the shamanic powers they’re supposed to be studying.  Adia might be good at her kitchen work, if only she didn’t keep getting sabotaged by the snootiest student in the school and waylaid by the building itself directing her to places she’s not supposed to be.  

On one of these trips, she finds herself overhearing a secret meeting of the Alusi, the gods of the traditional religion of her people.  They’re discussing a demon problem much worse than Adia’s.  Adia’s only hope is to make herself useful to the goddess Gentle Ginikanwa – who turns out to have a fiery temper.  Because maybe if Adia can save the world, Ginikanwa will help her save herself.  

This story has a sparkling sense of humor, exciting adventure, and a snarky heroine who is remarkably self-possessed despite believing things about herself that we as readers are sure from the beginning can’t be true.  There’s also a strong pushback against colonizers and cultural appropriation, epic fantasy-style. I couldn’t quite figure out the time period, as it seems to exist in a world where the cities have a much higher technology level than Adia’s home village.  It has a smart, contemporary sensibility that should appeal to lots of readers.  

I plan to make a full list of Nigerian-related fantasy books soon, but in the meantime, here are a few other middle grade fantasy novels with similar settings, both historical and contemporary. 

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2023 Cybils Finalists and Ones that Got Away

Posted on January 10, 2024 by Katy K.

Here is my mostly-annual post about the seven fantastic books my fellow Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction Cybils panelists and I chose, narrowing down from nearly 100 nominees. As always, while I truly love the books we chose, and I do see the need to have a shorter list, there are lots of titles that I loved that got missed, so I’m including those as well.

2023 Cybils Finalists

2023 Cybils nominees I loved that got away

Cover of Don’t Want to be Your Monster by Deke Moulton
Cover of Elf Dog and Owl Head by M.T. Anderson. Illustrated by Junyi Wu.
Cover of The Eyes and the Impossible by Dave Eggers. Illustrated by Shawn Harris.
Cover of Just a Pinch of Magic by Alechia Dow
Cover of The Kingdom over the Sea by Zohra Nabi
Cover of The Lost Library by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass
Cover of Speculation by Nisi Shawl
Cover of Three Tasks for a Dragon by Eoin Colfer. Illustrated by P.J. Lynch.

If by some chance all of these are new enough that they’re all checked out at your library, you can also take a look at my Ones that Got Away posts from previous years: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2018 , 2017, and 2015.

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Demons and Dark Lords: The Demon Sword Asperides and The Dark Lord’s Daughter

Posted on January 3, 2024 by Katy K.

Happy New Year, dear readers! 

Here are a couple of Cybils reviews that I had waiting and am sharing with you, while I go put together a list of the finalists and my favorites that didn’t make it for your perusal. Both of these books play with and against stereotypes of evil and good. 

Cover of The Demon Sword Asperides by Sarah Jean Horwitz.
Cover of The Dark Lord's Daughter by Patricia C. Wrede

The Demon Sword Asperides by Sarah Jean Horwitz. Read by Mark Sanderlin. Algonquin Young Readers, 2023. ASIN B0BLWJ7X4D. Listened to audiobook on Libby.

The Demon Sword Asperides has been peacefully hanging out in disreputable bars in the underworld since he made a deal to keep his last, extremely evil master, Amyral Venir, trapped between life and death – literally, with his sword body through the evil sorcerer.  Now, though, Asperides is hearing rumors of the third moon returning – which could both bring back his evil former master and unmake Asperides.  That means Asperides has to find a new master, and quickly – one who can help him stop both of these possibilities. 

That someone is young Nack Furnival, recently turned out of his clan of knights for letting a young enemy escape.  Nack is desperate to prove himself worthy of being a demon-hunting knight himself, the pinnacle of which is earning an angel blade with a spirit that will magically increase his strength and fighting prowess.  So when, following a very awesome pair of independent married knights, Sir Willa and Sir Barb, he finds Asperides, he’s ready to believe that Asperides is the angel blade he’s been hoping for – even if Asperides is rather more than he’d been expecting.  Eventually joining Nack and Asperides is twelve-year-old Therin, a novitiate of the Sisters of the Missing Moon who is in very high demand as she is the one who delivered the original prophecy.  

This story of found family and redemption is laugh-out-loud funny and at the same time unexpectedly moving.  Asperides is especially snarky, while Nack’s dream of once more being accepted by his family is one that’s easy to feel.  It has echoes of Horwitz’s earlier Dark Lord Clementine while broadening the focus and staying entirely its own. This is a delightful story I look forward to rereading.  

The Dark Lord’s Daughter by Patricia C. Wrede. Random House, 2023. ISBN 978-0553536201. Read from a library copy.

14-year-old Kayla and her (adoptive) mom and younger brother are out for a day at the state fair when they’re whisked away to an alternate dimension by a person telling them that Kayla is the daughter of the previous Dark Lord, whose final wish was that she be found and inherit his kingdom.  It’s startling for everyone when Kayla’s tablet turns into a talking gargoyle-type creature, though it does at least enhance her look as a possible Dark Lady.  But with minions afraid she’ll kill them and relatives scheming to take her place, life in a castle isn’t quite what Kayla was expecting.  There’s some hilarity as her aunt tries to dress her in black and acid green outfits with plunging necklines that her mother absolutely refuses to let her wear and her little brother insists on exploring everywhere – especially where he shouldn’t.  Kayla can see that the kingdom is struggling and needs leadership, so she isn’t willing to just try to go home as her mother wants.  She’ll have to find her own way to claim the castle without resorting to the evil deeds that neither she nor her mother want her to be involved in.  

This hearkens back a little bit to The Dark Lord Clementine, with the major difference that Kayla has been raised on Earth without magic, taught that kindness and equity are virtues.  And it’s a lost princess book, except that Kayla doesn’t want to be a princess, and has brought her mother and little brother along, neither of whom are willing to be left out, even if Kayla’s magical sense does mean that she knows more than her mother about what’s going on.  All in all, this is an entertaining romp of a book that pushes against the expected.  

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Just a Pinch of Magic by Alechia Dow

Posted on December 20, 2023 by Katy K.

Here’s the final book from my Baking Fantasy list – I enjoyed it just as much as I was hoping. 

Just a Pinch of Magic
by Alechia Dow.

Read by Renee Dorian
and Amber Dekkers.

Feiwel & Friends, 2023

ISBN 978-1250829115

Listened to audiobook on Libby. Ebook and print also available. 

Wini has grown up helping in her family’s magical bakery in the tiny magical village of Honeycrisp Hill*.  Her dream is to use her own food-focused magic in the bakery for the rest of her life- but for that to happen, the bakery has to stay open.  She’s hoping that if she alters one of her grandmother’s old spells, she’ll be able to make their own supply of bottled love instead of needing to purchase expensive bottles of it.  

Kal has grown up in Boston with her single journalist dad, waiting for the day when he’ll say it’s safe for her to try the word magic she must have inherited from him. Finally, they’re moving to Honeycrisp Hill to open a bookstore there, and Kal hopes to have more time with her father to herself, instead of him being traveling most of the time.  Trouble soon intrudes on this dream, as her estranged grandfather insists on joining them, and way too many people in Honeycrisp Hill ask her if the bookstore is really haunted.  

As the bakery and the bookstore are across the street from each other, Wini and Kal meet right away.  They might not hit it off immediately, but they both have an incentive to make a friend who isn’t familiar with their histories – Wini is the daughter of the now-banished witch who cursed Honeycrisp Hill, and Kal struggles with anxiety.  

Then Wini’s slightly illegal, definitely above her spell grade enchantment goes spectacularly wrong.  Now there’s a dark shadow swooping around town, and the Enchantment Agency sends investigators to find out who might have called the evil into the town.  Meanwhile, Kal is struggling as the new girl in magic classes where everyone else has been practicing their spellcraft for years.  And even if the spell didn’t work all the way – could it be coincidence that Wini and Kals’ dads are flirting with each other?  

The dual narrators are a perfect choice for this two-perspective story, helping to keep the two characters distinct. This is a book filled with sweet treats, magical books, family secrets uncovered, and kids learning to make friends – in other words, delectable.  

*Here I find myself wishing that a town that the story claims to be over 200 years old wasn’t named for an apple variety I remember being new in my lifetime, and go down a rabbit hole of researching more appropriate apple names.  Winesap Way?  Russet Knob?  Roxbury? (the name of a real town in Massachusetts where the first American apple cultivar, the Roxbury Russet, was developed.)  Do you have a great alternative name? 

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Three Tasks for a Dragon and My Head Has a Bellyache

Posted on December 13, 2023 by Katy K.
Cover of My Head Has a Bellyache by Chris Harris. Illustrated by Andrea Tsurumi.
Cover of Three Tasks for a Dragon by Eoin Colfer. Illustrated by P.J. Lynch.

Just in case you’re still looking for a gift to give to a kid in your life, here are two beautiful books, each suited to a different kind of kid, or perhaps different moods. Both of these have been nominated for the Cybils this year. Side note: is it just me who rolls my eyes at lists of gift books that start at $50 each? I have never been able to afford books that pricey for the many people I gift books to at the holidays. These are both priced at $20 US, which seems very reasonable for books with color illustrations on nearly every page.

My Head Has a Bellyache by Chris Harris. Illustrated by Andrea Tsurumi. Little, Brown, 2023. ISBN 978-0316592598. Read from a library copy.

I confess that I nominated My Head Has a Bellyache for the Cybils based on what I’d heard about it, and then read it a poem or two a day up until last week until I finished it. I am still glad I heard about it! There’s nothing wrong with Shel Silverstein, of course, but I am always happy to see new and truly funny books of poetry for kids come out. There are lots of poems in this, describing crazy dreams, the conflict between a kid’s story-telling and his mom calling him to dinner, meteor strikes, one written to Future Me, and much, much more. Nearly all the poems rhyme (I know teachers who look for non-rhyming examples to give kids). While most of them are standard AABB, there are lots of creative word choices, a page of limerick haiku and haiku limericks, poems for more than one voice, and some that require creativity from the reader to figure out, such as a poem that travels around the page and one where snakes have taken over some of the letters, changing the meaning of the words. There are running gags, like the word “buffalo” that wanders out of one page and travels in and out of multiple other spreads before reappearing late in the book, and a poem made out of the page numbers at the bottom. For yet more variety, there are even a couple of thoughtful reflections on time and nature. I was reading this at work, so my coworkers had to put up with me reading poems or whole shorter poems aloud to them, or just laughing out loud. Illustrations by Andrea Tsurumi are cartoonish digital line drawings with color washes, which show kids (and a few adults) of lots of ethnic backgrounds and add to the overall humor of the book. These would be lots of fun to read out loud, and would also be a good choice for kids who either don’t have the focus for a novel or who read through novels so quickly that a book that’s good for dipping in and out of is the best choice. 

Three Tasks for a Dragon by Eoin Colfer. Illustrated by P.J. Lynch. Candlewick, 2023. ISBN 9781536229998. Read from a library copy. Ebook and audiobook available from Libby. 

This book by two award-winning Irish creators starts out in classic fairy-tale style: Prince Lir is sent by his stepmother and stepbrother to rescue a maiden from a dragon. If he does not, he will be banished from his beloved kingdom, because he, truthfully like all the kings from the past few hundred years, is unable to summon the wolfhounds sacred to the kingdom. But Prince Lir is neither a brave warrior nor the classic fool. He’s a scholar and scientist, determined to use his wits to save the maiden and be able to return home without harming the dragon – because why would a scientist want to harm such a rare species? Prince Lir is honest enough not to see the treachery, but the maiden, Cethlenn – a palace servant taken to the dragon by the stepbrother – is much cannier. The dragon, Lasvarg, doesn’t trust humans in general, but the tasks that Prince Lir offers to perform for him are worth the small risk that Lasvarg will lose his new servant. Thus many traditional elements are combined to make a tale that feels both classic and fresh. What truly pushes this into gift book quality are the full-color, often full page illustrations on nearly every page, turning the slim book into something to savor. (I’m really curious how they make up for this lack in the audiobook – perhaps with extra music?) All the characters read as white, and the expected romance, though understated, is heterosexual. I would still count this as having some diversity, as we get some passages from Cethlenn’s point of view, and she is definitely economically underprivileged. And with a scientific prince, a clever maidservant, and a glorious dragon, there is a lot to enjoy here. 

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Unconventional Epics: Abeni’s Song and Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston

Posted on December 8, 2023 by Katy K.

I’m reading my Cybils nominations far faster than I’m able to blog them, but here are two recent reads that I really enjoyed, both classic epic fantasies with unconventional twists.

Cover of Abeni's Song by P. Djèlí Clark.
Cover of Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston by Esme Symes-Smith.

Abeni’s Song by P. Djèlí Clark. Starscape, 2023. ISBN 978-1250825827. Read from a library copy.

Abeni has grown up content in her quiet village in the jungle, secure in her family. She’s looking forward to the harvest festival on her birthday – the day the story opens – and her coming of age the following year.  The only sign that things might be changing is that she and all the other children she knows have woken up from dreams of a song. But this year the normal excitement is shattered – first by the old woman the village calls a witch, who comes in telling the village elders – the elders! – that they have ignored her warning for too long and danger is upon them.  Before Abeni knows what’s happening, a group of strangely fierce women warriors invade the village, striking down all the strong warriors of the village, the children have run away following a man in a goat mask playing a beautiful song on a pipe, and the village itself has been set on fire.  The last thing her mother did before going to defend the village was to give Abeni to the witch.  This means that Abeni survives – but is stuck living with the witch. 

Abeni decides to do whatever it takes to find her parents and the other children in the village.  Everything she has thought about the world and herself is expanded as she learns more of what she can do and the world and the struggles outside her village.  There’s a deep grounding in African folklore, with echoes of the Pied Piper, modern guerilla warfare, and the slave trade mythologized.  It’s a rich, absorbing story that is clearly not wrapped up in this first book. I will have to wait for Abeni and the Kingdom of Gold, due out in August 2024. Children of the Quicksands and Ikenga are other recent books set in Africa, though they are clearly modern-day, while Abeni lives in an unidentified past.

Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston by Esme Symes-Smith. ISBN 978-0593485774. Labyrinth, 2022. 

In a classic fantasy medieval setting, a nonbinary child yearns to be knight of Helston, like their father.  But Helston has strict traditions involving gender roles – girls only do magic, the gentler art, while boys do fighting without magic.  Callie left their mother and her expectations behind years ago, living with their father and his new partner in a camp for similar outcasts.  When Callie’s dad is summoned back to court to help train the prince, Callie is determined to go with him and become a knight themself.  On the way, they cross paths with a dragon and learn of a fearsome witch who lives in the wilds outside the main city of Helston.

Once there, though, Callie’s ambitions are immediately and forcefully stalled by the chancellor, Lord Peran, who effectively runs the kingdom.  Lord Peran is determined to make Callie into a proper girl, while forcing their father to teach magical Prince Will to be properly manly and violent.  Callie befriends Lord Peran’s daughter, Elowen, who knows how to blend in as well as how to use her magic in truly powerful ways.  Together, perhaps they can help the prince and the kingdom embrace all their strengths to help Helston fend off impending attackers. Even though Callie is confident in who they are, they grow a lot over the course of learning how to work through this powerful opposition. This is a book with a message, and it doesn’t shy away from that message either for the reader or in the dialog between characters.  I found I did not mind this, as I still believed in the characters and their mission, and it was just so much fun overall.  Usually I’m very picky about modern touches in my medieval fantasy, and this had a couple, including frequent uses of “kid” and “kiddo” and some eating of potatoes.  I was willing to forgive the use of “kid”, though, as modern readers would no longer be familiar with any Middle English words with the same shades of meaning, and perhaps this not-quite-European setting had native potatoes.  I’m currently on hold for the second book, Sir Callie and the Dragon’s Roost, and hope that our main characters will be allowed to just go on being their own fabulous, unconventional selves while confronting the further enemies of the realm. This is a good one to give to fans of Tamora Pierce.

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