A nail-biting, heart-pounding—and heartbreaking—adventure.
The return of a long-lost sister disrupts the peace of a quiet town.
Melur, a Malaysian girl at a U.S. summer camp, wanders into the woods on a dare in order to find the Witch of Cabin 23. The Witch tells her a terrifying tale about a 12-year-old Malaysian girl named Alia who’s moved with her family from Kuala Lumpur back to Negeri Sembilan, where she grew up. Alia struggles to fit in; she also hears eerie noises and feels as though someone’s watching her. Things start to look up when her older sister, Ayu, now 21, returns after mysteriously leaving home years ago. But strange things keep happening, and her classmates report seeing a floating head in the night sky. Could it be a penanggalan, a vampiric monster that, according to Malaysian lore, preys upon children and can remove its head? Alia’s parents are thrilled at Ayu’s return, but Alia suspects that Ayu is connected to the odd occurrences, and she devises a plan to uncover the truth. The reality she confronts is far more complex than she could have ever imagined. The latest in this anthology series—each of which is written by a different author—beautifully weaves Malaysian folklore into a gripping, deeply moving thriller that grapples with the devastating toll that secrets can take upon a family. Both Melur and Alia are Muslim; Melur wears hijab, while Alia often repeats Quranic verses to herself.
A nail-biting, heart-pounding—and heartbreaking—adventure. (Horror. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780063283947
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Tenderly resonant and memorable.
Ferris finds herself in the midst of several love stories during the summer before fifth grade.
Emma Phineas Wilkey’s moniker comes from the circumstances of her birth: under the Ferris wheel at the fairground. Her contained world, centered around her family and best friend, is filled with kindness, humor, and singular personalities, while the indeterminate late-20th-century small-town setting feels like a safe place from which to observe heartbreak and loss. Ferris’ architect father and her pragmatic mother, on break from teaching high school math, anchor her home life, along with Pinky, her hilariously ferocious 6-year-old sister, and Charisse, her grandmother, who claims to have seen an unhappy ghost in their big old house. Ferris’ best friend, Billy Jackson, whom she’s loved since kindergarten, hears the music of the world: “The whole world is singing all the time.” Ferris, serious and sensitive, is attuned to the ways that the vocabulary words they learned in Mrs. Mielk’s fourth grade class describe moments in her life. DiCamillo’s gift for conveying an entire person and world in a few brushstrokes of storytelling provides depth and quiet magic to this account of an eventful summer in which a ghost is appeased, an outlaw (Pinky) is somewhat reformed, and an uncle and aunt are reconciled. Ferris experiences two surprising moments of transcendence and becomes aware of the ways love suffuses everything. Characters are cued white.
Tenderly resonant and memorable. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781536231052
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
Supernatural mystery meets generational drama with hopeful endings for all.
Eleven-year-old Frank must solve a supernatural mystery to save his new home.
As fifth grade comes to an end, Frank Fernández is looking forward to finally staying put in Alabama for a second year, as promised, after a childhood spent following his parents’ home renovation work all across the country. Frequent relocation has made Frank wary of forming friendships or making plans, but his hopes for more stability are temporarily dashed when his parents announce plans to renovate a lighthouse in the Florida Keys, near where his mother grew up and his father’s home country of Cuba. Papi promises this will be their last move, though: The lighthouse will be theirs. But from their first day on Spectacle Key, things seem to go wrong: Tensions rise between his parents, and Frank’s hopes of a forever home are under threat from seemingly supernatural forces. In order to put down roots, Frank and new ghostly friend Connie, a White girl with freckles, must discover what secrets the island is hiding, uncovering Frank’s own family roots along the way. Frank is a fan of horror—he names his new Great Dane puppy Mary Shelley. But though there is some mild peril to be found, rather than a ghostly thriller, this is an appealing, lightly spooky family drama with valuable lessons for those who would hide from a difficult past instead of confronting and healing generational trauma.
Supernatural mystery meets generational drama with hopeful endings for all. (Supernatural. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-313481-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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