written and illustrated by Sharon Frances ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2025
Rich language and striking visuals reveal emotional lessons about family, resolution, and love.
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In this illustrated novel, a teenage girl learns to truly live while confronting the reality of death.
With summer vacation winding down, 14-year-old Phoenix is looking forward to starting eighth grade. But one week before school begins, her parent, Eagle, is diagnosed with brain cancer. Reeling from the news, Phoenix attempts to separate her worlds: the one at school, where she tries to be a “normal” student (but still finds that “the cancer ghost walks behind” her), and the one at home, where she and her grandparent, Duck, try to care for Eagle during his illness. All the while, Phoenix finds that wings are beginning to sprout from her shoulder blades—making real her desire to be both “human and bird.” She finds unexpected comfort and acceptance in a new friend from school, the colorful and eternally optimistic Ing. But soon the family trio discovers that a coyote is waiting in the wings, biding its time while it tries to steal the headdress that Eagle wears as part of his cancer treatment. This savage, eternally hungry representation of death stalks the family until Phoenix slowly learns to embrace her new wings and become the kind of person—and bird—who loves without fear. Using magical realism to blend the real and supernatural, Frances writes in nonrhyming verse form, with the formatting of the words sometimes echoing the action itself (the words “bird / spiraled / down,” for example, drops down the page). Each page features unique black-and-white block prints, with some covering the whole page and others adding small narrative details on the text pages.
Frances’ words and illustrations stack upon each other to form a compelling series of images that plays upon the book’s powerful themes of love and death. One full-page print, for example, shows a black silhouette of Phoenix wearing a hoodie, all human except for one arm that is a wing and the opposite foot that is a bird claw. It’s a visual feast based on a story that seemingly draws much of its animal representation from Native American lore. This is perhaps most obvious in the character of the coyote: “Coyote crawls through the window, / eyes gleaming, teeth snarling. / ‘Come to the table, Eagle. / Let me test your blood.’/ Needles and playing cards fall from the sky.” Phoenix’s journey toward acceptance and healing involves many starts and stops, eloquently reflecting the fluid emotions that people (especially teenagers) experience during times of upheaval. Some instances may strike a chord even among those who haven’t experienced a serious medical diagnosis in their family, especially since Frances has a knack for capturing the universal difficulties of existence: “So she did the hard thing– / she let herself feel everything / she let herself burn.” While some younger readers may struggle with accepting the book’s various animals and nature as metaphors for such ephemeral concepts as death and hope, the physical representation of these ideas creates its own kind of power: “After school, / I crawl on my hands and knees / into the river. / My wings are damp. / I cannot fly. / But maybe I can swim.” Frances has crafted a modern-day folktale that accomplishes the unique feat of providing both entertainment and catharsis.
Rich language and striking visuals reveal emotional lessons about family, resolution, and love.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781734419641
Page Count: 242
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Daniel Aleman ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 4, 2021
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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by E. Lockhart ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 13, 2014
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
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New York Times Bestseller
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
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