Books
Elatsoe
Elatsoe
Ellie Bride is an intelligent, determined, and asexual young Native woman with the ability to bring the dead back to life, as demonstrated through her stalwart companion, Kirby the poltergeist puppy. One rule remains unchanging, though: humans must never be brought back from the underworld. After Ellie's beloved cousin dies and reveals the murderer to her in dreams, she must find a way to unravel the truth behind the eerie town of Willowbee, Texas, and work with her premonitions, her family, and her fae-descended best friend to keep everyone safe from a vengeful ghost. Little Badger's stunning, haunting debut brings to the fantasy genre a fresh voice and perspective, weaving in folktales, omens, and urban legends of the protagonist's Lipan Apache culture. Illuminated by Cai's intricately beautiful chapter-opening illustrations and interspersed with Apache terminology and mythology, often presented through stories of Ellie's namesake and ancestor, Six-Great, Little Badger's fast-paced, spine-tingling mystery follows Ellie the aspiring PI (paranormal investigator) and her allies as they battle vampires, spirits, curses, and familial and personal grief to overcome an evil that threatens to end them all.
Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.
parachutes
parachutes
Claire is a parachute, a wealthy teen from Shanghai whose parents covet the prestige of a foreign education. Dani, a scholarship student, works after school cleaning the homes of her wealthy classmates to help her mom make ends meet. Although Dani and Claire share a home-as host and boarder-they exist in separate social orbits. Yang accentuates their differences through chapters that alternate between their perspectives, highlighting the narrators' socioeconomic status, reputation, and misconceptions about each other. Their divergent worlds are brought together by experiences of sexual harassment and assault, pointing to the pervasiveness of sexual abuse on school campuses. Claire and Dani's mettle and solidarity as they contend with the institutions and privilege that hide abuse is gripping and empowering. Yang offers a compelling exploration of the parachute experience and the intersection of ethnicity, class, and reputation, while underscoring striking cultural parallels between America and China.
Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.
pet
pet
Teenager Jam unwittingly animates her mother's painting, summoning a being through a cross-dimensional portal. When Pet, giant and grotesque, bursts into her life one night, Jam learns it has emerged to hunt and needs the help of a human who can go places it cannot. Through their telekinetic connection, Jam learns that though all the monsters were thought to have been purged by the angels, one still roams the house of her best friend, Redemption, and Jam must uncover it. There's a curious vagueness as to the nature of the banished monsters' crimes, and it takes a few chapters to settle into Emezi's, set in an unspecified American town where people are united under the creed: "We are each other's harvest. We are each other's business. We are each other's magnitude and bond," taken from Gwendolyn Brooks' ode to Paul Robeson. However, their lush imagery and prose coupled with nuanced inclusion of African diasporic languages and peoples creates space for individuals to broadly love and live. Jam's parents strongly affirm and celebrate her trans identity, and Redemption's three parents are dedicated and caring, giving Jam a second, albeit more chaotic, home. Still, Emezi's timely and critical point, "monsters don't look like anything," encourages our steady vigilance to recognize and identify them even in the most idyllic of settings.
Copyright 2018 Booklist Reviews.
Love from a to z
Love from a to z
Zayneb is an 18-year-old hijabi from Indiana—and she was just suspended for standing up to her Islamophobic teacher. Now she's on her way to Doha to spend two weeks with her cool aunt Nandy and forget about her troubles at school. On the flight, Zayneb meets Adam, who converted to Islam at age 11 after his mom—Auntie Nandy's best friend—died from multiple sclerosis. Enamored with each other, Adam and Zayneb begin to share their life stories: Adam is keeping a huge secret from his father and sister, Zayneb hasn't shared with her aunt why she's been suspended, and both are mourning loved ones. Slowly, they fall in love, but their different experiences of dealing with racism and pain threaten to drive them apart. The novel's dual narrative structure uses raw, earnest journal entries to guide readers through the painful realities of the Islamophobia and racism that permeate all levels of society. Zayneb's story shows how the smallest incidents have trickle-down effects that dehumanize Muslims and devalue Muslim lives in some people's eyes. This is a refreshing depiction of religiosity and spirituality coexisting with so-called "normal" young adult relationships and experiences: What makes Zayneb and Adam different is not their faith but their ability to learn from and love one another in a world hurling obstacles their way. Zayneb is half Pakistani and half West Indian; Adam is Canadian of Chinese and Finnish descent.
Copyright Kirkus 2019 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
Monster
Monster
Myers' award-winning 1999 novel was a bold experiment in form, telling portions of the story in, among other things, a screenplay. African American teen Steve Harmon is a burgeoning filmmaker, and his interest in cinema shapes his account of being on trial for his role in a robbery that resulted in murder. Steve's story would be dramatic in any format, but this graphic adaptation is particularly well suited to the tale. Told as a trial with flashbacks to the robbery and moments in the lives of those affected, Sims' adaptation, aided by Anyabwile's ingenious black-and-white comic-book-style sequential art, perfectly captures the natural suspense of a courtroom drama. Using panels like a filmstrip, Sims and Anyabwile achieve several remarkably cinematic effects: alternating grids and splash pages captures the tension between close-up and long shots; the use of jittery lettering and uneven word balloons injects deeper anxiety into the "sound design"; having a jury view the events recounted in testimony as a movie audience creates incisive visual metaphors. Though this graphic adaptation requires close and focused attention to unpack at times, the superbly rewarding format serves to powerfully emphasize Myers' themes of perspective and the quest to see one's self clearly.
Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
Long Way Down
Long Way Down
Reynolds' award-winning novel in verse, a spare, lyrical exploration of the reverberating effects of gun violence on one community, gets a compelling new look in this graphic adaptation. After Will's brother, Shawn, is killed in a shooting, Will vows to follow the long-standing rules: no crying; no snitching; get revenge. But as he descends in his building's elevator one morning on his way to fulfill the final rule-shooting the kid he's pretty sure shot his brother-a new ghost appears at each floor and makes him question what he's doing, even the rules themselves. Novgorodoff uses loose, aqueous watercolors in a rich palette to deftly complement the emotional, ghostly atmosphere of Reynolds' story: letters partly washed away suggest tears; splashes of dusky blues signify snapshot-like memories; emotional facial expressions zoom front and center; and thoughtfully placed negative space poignantly evokes the devastating absence gun violence leaves in its wake. Far more than just an illustration of the events of the novel, Novgorodoff's iteration powerfully cultivates the tone and mood of its source material, demonstrating just how effective and artful comics can be. This can easily stand on its own, but read in concert with Reynolds' novel, it will illuminate the story and its important themes with even more depth and empathy.
Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.