A delightfully sweet mix of magic and friendship (and pets).
Jolina uses magic to seek revenge on a bully.
Twelve-year old Jolina has recently moved to Isla Pag-Ibig from the busy city of Manila. Moving to the small island hasn’t been easy, especially with Claudine continually bullying her. Luckily, Jolina has her dog, Kidlat, and her healer grandfather’s lessons in the arbularyo’s magic to distract her. But one day Claudine makes it a point not to invite Jolina to her birthday party, and Jolina can’t take it anymore. Even though she’s just an apprentice and she knows powerful magic comes with significant consequences, Jolina brews a gayuma to exact revenge. The powerful love potion works, and now Claudine wants to be her best friend, following anything Jolina says. The girls get to know each other and become real friends, but the price of magic must be paid, putting everything and everyone at risk. This is a fun, heartwarming #ownvoices novel of friendship, love, and forgiveness. Fantasy mixes with reality, exploring themes of privilege, consent, free will, and sacrifice. Filipino culture and Tagalog are naturally worked into the story, which highlights the old healing practices, landscape, food, and history of the Philippines. Early on in the story, Jolina heartbreakingly compares her dark brown skin, thick straight black hair, and flat nose to Claudine’s light brown skin, wavy black hair, and high-bridged nose. Claudine’s mother has a female partner.
A delightfully sweet mix of magic and friendship (and pets). (recipe, author's note) (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-63092-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A deeply imaginative journey that puts the “cat” in cathartic.
A loyal black kitten’s boy is under supernatural attack.
Eleven-month-old Nimbus loves Fletcher, the boy who nursed her back to health following life-threatening injuries. When Fletcher becomes curious about a strange jar and opens it, releasing a terrible goblin, loyal Nim protects Fletcher, taking heavy damage in the process. But Fletcher’s aunt, who’s caring for him over spring break, believes Nim attacked Fletcher and dumps her far from home. Rhett, a stylish rat with star quality, befriends injured Nim and leads her to a witch’s house. While the witch cares for Nim, the witch’s cats (maternal Fern, bookish Rochester, standoffish Bianca, and openly hostile Abraxas) teach Nim important cat skills. She also discovers she has a supernatural ability: In destroying one eye of the nightmare demon in the fight to protect Fletcher, Nim gained its “dream sight.” But she also learns it might come back for Fletcher, who no longer has Nim to protect him, posing a time-sensitive, high-stakes threat. Even though the witch’s home is nice and magic itself seems to be telling her to stay put, Nim wants to find a way back to Fletcher. As a hero, Nimbus is as gritty and determined as she is adorable. Tear-jerker moments explore pet abandonment—readers may want their own pets on hand to hug—all the way through the magical, action-packed finale. Fletcher and the witch read white.
A deeply imaginative journey that puts the “cat” in cathartic. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780062680372
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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