Ava Bonney of Birmingham, England, is not your typical sleuth, and she’s one readers of Marie Tierney’s debut mystery, Deadly Animals, will long remember. Living in a sparse apartment with her younger sister and selfish mother, 14-year-old Ava makes her own entertainment. Bones fascinate her—“We are our bones,” she says. To further her scientific studies, she has created a secret “body farm” to study the anatomy of decomposing roadkill that she finds. A former biology teacher who grew up in Birmingham herself, Tierney sets the book in the early 1980s of her youth, writing with the analytic precision of a scientist and the literary aplomb of a gifted storyteller.
During a morning outing to her farm, Ava discovers the body of 14-year-old local bully Mickey Grant and, soon after, the missing, now murdered 6-year-old Bryan Shelton. Ava quickly acts to preserve valuable evidence in danger of disappearing. Fearing the police won’t take her seriously, she pretends to be an adult while calling in Mickey’s murder, and enlists her best friend, John, to call about Bryan. “Their secret was gargantuan,” Ava and John realize. “It was scary and exciting, an adventure—but also a horror story.”
A serial killer is on the loose, and Ava begins a surreptitious partnership with Detective Seth Delahaye—who recognizes her genius—to track down the murderer. Ava and Delahaye’s initial cat-and-mouse communications burgeon into mutual trust and respect, forming the empowering heart of the novel. “Ava was custodian of the dead,” Tierney writes, “this she understood. The idea of hurting an animal, by accident or on purpose, was anathema to her.” As Ava stumbles across murdered bodies and tortured animal corpses, she has an “awful epiphany: this killer was just herself turned inside out: her fatal inversion.”
This noteworthy debut is a fast-paced, brilliantly plotted mystery, filled with short chapters and crisp prose. Gory—but never gratuitous—details of dead animals and humans abound, but all are in service of the plot, as well as Ava’s scientific interests and investigation. As the book progresses, the stakes become higher and danger creeps closer to Ava and John, leading to a dramatic conclusion. With Deadly Animals, Tierney has created an exceptional heroine who demands a sequel.
Deadly Animals, Marie Tierney’s brilliantly plotted debut mystery, introduces readers to Ava Bonney: a 14-year-old English girl obsessed with decomposing bodies.
Soon after Magda Eklund turns 65, she and her longtime best friend Sara have a discussion about birthday parties. Magda brings up one of her earlier parties, where Sara was at first “nowhere to be seen,” eventually arriving late. Sara reassures her by saying, “Mags, I will only ever surprise you by showing up, how’s that? For the rest of your life, whenever you least expect it, I’ll be there.”
That prescient pledge turns out to be the premise of Anna Montague’s debut novel, How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? By 2011, when Magda turns 70, Sara has died—quite suddenly—and her husband has asked Magda to become caretaker of Sara’s ashes because his girlfriend is moving in. Magda, a psychiatrist, obliges: The ebullient, artsy Sara was the shining light in her life, and after her death Magda has drifted. She spends all of her time helping patients in her Manhattan practice, while steadfastly ignoring her own confounding issues. She continues to write letters to her late friend, noting, for instance, “How perhaps I’ve always been a better custodian of other people’s feelings than my own.” However, when she stumbles upon Sara’s plans for the two of them to celebrate Magda’s 70th birthday with a road trip, Magda decides to forge ahead with the journey.
In lesser hands, this setup—having a deceased major character—might present hurdles, such as the difficulty of revealing layers of the past while advancing the plot, and of making Magda’s interior psychological journey compelling. Rest assured, Montague nimbly tackles each of these challenges and more, including frequent, well-balanced doses of humor and pathos. Magda’s road trip, which includes stops in Virginia, Tennessee, New Orleans, Texas and New Mexico, allows her to meet an intriguing succession of characters, all while learning more about her own psyche and her relationship with Sara. At one point, she wanders into a women’s retreat, where the dubious director’s words prove apt: “The real trips happen here, in our heads. In our hearts.”
How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? is a noteworthy debut about looking back while moving forward. Friendship, love, regret, repression, grief, yearning, aging and new beginnings—Montague explores each of these themes with both creative and contemplative depth.
Anna Montague explores friendship, aging, grief, regret and love with both creative and contemplative depth in her noteworthy debut, How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?
Allan Say has had a long, storied career as a children’s author and illustrator. He won the 1994 Caldecott for Grandfather’s Journey, about his grandfather’s voyages from Japan to America and back, and wrote about his own childhood in The Ink-Keeper’s Apprentice. Say was born in Japan in 1937, came to the United States at age 16, and eventually settled in Portland, Oregon, in 1999. Tonbo is a contemplative, creative look back on his own life, accompanied by his beautifully luminous oil paintings.
Tonbo follows an old man with a cane taking a morning stroll through the park. A large white bird startles him, reminding him of a toy airplane he once had as a child, which he called “Tonbo,” the Japanese word for dragonfly. Suddenly engulfed in his memories, he chases after the elusive toy, finding himself mysteriously transported to a number of places from his youth, and each person he encounters treats him as if he is getting younger. “What are you looking for, young man?” one woman asks. When a captain calls him “son,” the man laughs, saying, “Excuse me, but I may be older than your father.”
At first, readers see everything from the old man’s perspective. We see the people he encounters and sometimes his shadow. Say’s use of color is magnificent, using mostly muted, dreamlike tones highlighted by intense blocks of color—an orange chimney and mint green roof set against a dark blue ocean; the teal blue of the sky; the green awning and pink outer wall of an ice cream shop. It is at the ice cream shop where the protagonist realizes that the young man he sees in the window is his own reflection. It’s a sophisticated, nuanced progression that may take a few readings for some children to understand, but once they do, it will seem like magic.
Eventually, the protagonist becomes his kindergartener self, back in a garden in Japan, where he finally finds his beloved airplane. Moments later, he’s an old man once more, back with his “old friends—aching hands and knees.” He encounters a group of children on a field trip and leaves them a special gift, in a lovely gesture that brings to mind the circle of life.
Tonbo is a remarkable ode to the interplay between aging and memory, and how the distant past can suddenly come to life again in the blink of an eye. It’s also a wonderful multigenerational conversation starter about how certain memories can live inside us forever.
Tonbo is a remarkable ode to the interplay between aging and memory, and how the distant past can suddenly come to life again in the blink of an eye.
Fans of Kathryn Ormsbee’s first graphic novel, Growing Pangs, will be delighted by heroine Katie’s return in Turning Twelve, an immersive, probing coming-of-age story that brings to mind the adolescent angst of Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. Ormsbee effectively mines her own childhood for material.
Katie is growing up in a Baptist household in Kentucky in 2004. She’s a homeschooler who struggles with anxiety and OCD, as well as everything else that happens at that age, both mental and physical.
“Being twelve isn’t turning out like I’d planned at all. I kinda wished I’d stayed eleven,” Katie admits. Her two best friends are moving away, leaving her lonely and isolated in her church youth group. At the children’s theater, she dreams of getting the role of Annie, but instead, is cast as an orphan side character. One of Katie’s biggest alarms is her growing attraction to Grace, a pretty, funny new friend she meets in the Annie production. “I didn’t know I could get crushes on girls,” Katie says. Her feelings grow even more complicated at church and in youth group, where she is told that anything besides love between a man and a woman “breaks God’s heart. It makes him cry.”
Molly Brooks’ illustrations draw readers right into Katie’s dilemmas, and the structure and pacing of the story creates a meaningful interplay between the actual events and Katie’s roiling emotions. Katie’s red-headed, braces-filled expressions are relatable and help readers identify with her highs and lows, adding drama to each page, while Brooks’ use of red, purple and orange are striking, serving as a dynamic anchor for the graphic novel’s energy and flow.
Katie’s struggle with her emerging sexual feelings and her relationship with religion are particularly well done. Several figures provide helpful, empowering examples, including Katie’s older sister, Ashley; her therapist, Dr. Clara; and a woman whom Katie babysits for, a successful lawyer who shows her that careers can be exciting and fulfilling. As she observes people at a more progressive church and hears news about progress in gay rights legislation, Katie starts to realize, “Maybe theatre isn’t the only place in the world where I can be myself.”
Katie is just the sort of lively, inquisitive friend that a 12-year-old might yearn for. With its exhilarating combination of prose and illustrations, Turning Twelve will make readers clamor for more of Katie’s adventures.
With its exhilarating combination of prose and illustrations, Turning Twelve will make readers clamor for more of Katie’s adventures.
Sal Miller has “been ready for first grade for years.” The big day has finally arrived in Still Sal, Kevin Henkes’ latest chapter book about the Miller Family. Just as Beverly Cleary explored the Quimby family with beloved books about sisters Beezus and Ramona, Henkes has written with extraordinary perception and depth about the lives of 6-year-old Sal (Oh, Sal) and her older brother, Billy (Billy Miller Makes a Wish and Newbery Honoree The Year of Billy Miller). Still Sal is yet another book that demonstrates the myriad reasons this multitalented author and illustrator received the Children’s Literature Legacy Award in 2020.
“First grade isn’t as good as I thought it would be,” Sal soon discovers, especially when her best friend and neighbor, Griff, gets the lively, young, hip Ms. Flowers as a teacher, while Sal is assigned to dowdy Ms. McCormick, who wears shoes that “looked like loaves of underbaked bread,” has “streaky oatmeal-colored hair,” and seems to be all business and no fun. As Ms. Flowers becomes Sal’s new idol, she tries to do everything she can to be just like Ms. Flowers and be invited into her class.
Like Ramona, Sal is a force of nature, a little girl with big feelings. For example, when passing her neighbor’s house—who has been dead for two years—Sal muses “that Mr. Tooley’s ghost was in the house. It wasn’t scary—just a presence she sensed, but couldn’t explain, and kept to herself.” Henkes’ exquisite prose plunges readers right into every corner of Sal’s mind and world as she deals with Billy, Griff and her sometimes annoying sister, Poppy, who is 2 and now sharing her room—yet another surprising assault on Sal’s psyche. She is gently guided by Mama, a high school English teacher, and Papa, a sculptor who works out of the garage.
This chapter book is suitable for young listeners as a read-aloud or early readers as independent reading, while also being filled with emotionally complex characters and riveting, poignant moments—along with plenty of humor. Still Sal is not to be missed, and will leave readers eagerly awaiting the next Miller family installment.
Filled with emotionally complex characters and riveting, poignant moments, along with plenty of humor, Still Sal is not to be missed.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Louise Erdrich is adept at creating all-consuming domestic plots that adroitly reveal broader insights about society, power, economics and our natural world. She’s done so again, to great effect, in The Mighty Red.
The Mighty Red encompasses so much—a community of wonderful characters and a riveting plot, plus a profound look at our relationship with the natural world. What was your initial inspiration for this book?
Inspiration? If only. I get curious about a subject and investigate. There’s no lightning strike. When I want to know something, I keep reading about it, talking to people about it, taking notes. And I make the most of personal experience, of course. I grew up in the Red River Valley, and there’s nothing like the sky there. I was used to seeing the weather coming from a long way off, even though I was a town girl. All I knew about farming was some field labor. I hoed beets and also picked cucumbers or whatever came in season. It was obviously hard work, but I loved being on a girl crew and making good money. It was one of the few jobs you could get before turning 14. My mother and many other Turtle Mountain people picked potatoes near Grand Forks, North Dakota. She and her friends did it every year to make money for school clothes, dragging a gunny sack down the rows.
I’ve worked on The Mighty Red for at least a decade, but finishing the book only happened once I’d accumulated pieces of information, incidents, stories, ideas and, of course, characters.
At the beginning of the book, you write about the Red River of the North, saying, “The river was shallow, it was deep, I grew up there, it was everything.” Tell us about your relationship with the river.
There are so many things I still don’t know about the river that defined so much about my life. I wanted to think about that.
“I would talk about herbicide resistance with such enthusiasm that people started walking away from me.”
I love when one of the book’s central characters, Kismet Poe, reads Anna Karenina and says she is “surprised by how much of the book [is] about farming.” The Mighty Red is also about farming, and the details are fascinating. What sort of research did you do? Was it tough to integrate these facts so seamlessly into the narrative?
I read Anna Karenina every few years and the passages about farming are always interesting to me, sometimes more interesting than the doomed romance. My problem with writing about farming was that I found it hard to stop myself. I would talk about herbicide resistance with such enthusiasm that people started walking away from me. But then I’d get someone whose profession was connected with these issues, and we’d talk for hours.
Plenty of farmers are anxious to do the best they can for their land. Farming has always been a business, but there are businesses that care, and businesses that don’t. What’s most appalling isn’t in this book. For instance, R.D. Offutt, a giant agribusiness that supplies potatoes for McDonald’s french fries, has bought up land around communities on the White Earth Reservation and is using up fossil water and polluting tribal drinking water there. They operate with impunity. They just don’t care.
And most of that deep aquifer water is gone forever—for fries that are only delicious for six minutes, exactly. But, one might say, oh, those six minutes! Not so. You have to cram them in your mouth all at once, you can’t linger. Once they are 10 minutes old, they are limp, gummy and taste only of late-stage capitalism and mindless greed.
Which character came to you first? Which was the most difficult to write?
Hugo was the first character I wrote, and honestly they were all difficult. I wrestled with this entire book. So now I’m pretty sure St. Hildegarde (one of several patron saints of books and writers) will look upon me with favor and just cause my hand to move on the page until the next book is finished to perfection.
“I suppose it was absolutely crazy, and, you know, fun to write.
Tell us about how you settled on Kismet Poe’s wonderful name.
Years ago, I wrote down Kismet’s name. I have no idea where it came from, but I have lists of names and titles. While I was writing this book, my daughter Pallas raised a baby crow. We both wanted the most special name we could think of at the time, so I consulted my list. So there’s Kismet Poe and Kismet Crow. You can see her on TikTok @__pallas.
Also, my hope is that someone comes to me at a signing and says, “I named my treasured child for your character, Kismet.” I’d be so delighted. So far, besides Pallas’ crow, the only thing I know of named Kismet is a giant candy store on the way to Duluth.
Without giving anything away, Kismet’s father, Martin, is particularly intriguing! Did any of his actions surprise you as a writer? He seems to exemplify what you described in an interview with Time as “the usual crazy, crazy villainy that I love to write.”
This book is set during the economic collapse of 2008–09. What Martin does is only what a lot of people wanted to do. I didn’t think of what he did as villainy, but yes, I suppose it was absolutely crazy, and, you know, fun to write. I have to amuse myself.
The book club scenes in the novel are marvelous! Are you in a book club?
I am not in a book club these days, but I did run the Birchbark Books Singles Book Club at our bookstore in the early days. Everyone who came to our meetings was incredibly introverted. Nobody talked, everyone seemed embarrassed to be there, and after the meetings were over everyone raced off in different directions. Was it a failure? Perhaps not. I like to think that, after all, some strange alchemy took place. By serendipity, perhaps, a couple of the members met in a grocery store checkout line. They bonded over the weirdness of the book club, went back to one of their apartments, shared the groceries, etc., and a savior was born.
“As a Diné person who has worked in forensics for 16 years, I saw death,” Ramona Emerson says. “I saw death all the time.”
She speaks by phone from her home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, explaining how her Navajo heritage and work as a forensic photographer and videographer informed the creation of Rita Todacheene, a forensic photographer for the Albuquerque Police Department. Emerson’s first mystery starring Rita, Shutter, was a surprise hit that garnered numerous accolades and awards, including a spot on the National Book Award longlist.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone to read it, to tell you the truth,” she admits. Emerson, who is also a documentary filmmaker, adds, “I’ve never had anyone be interested in what I was doing.”
Indeed, there has been great anticipation for Exposure, the second book in her projected trilogy. Rita is summoned to photograph a horrific crime scene in the opening chapter: the murder of a retired police detective, his wife and six of their children. The oldest son, a teenager, is a suspect, but the ghost of one of his murdered sisters leads Rita to believe he is innocent.
“. . . you gotta worry about how much you’re putting your psyche and your mental stability and your own body on the line to get work done.”
Rita’s ability to see and hear the spirits of the dead is both a gift and a curse: The constant din of their voices becomes physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausting. Navajo tradition, however, makes it taboo to talk about death, so Emerson had serious concerns about how her character might be received. “You don’t talk about people once they have died. You have a four-day mourning period and it’s done,” she explains. “So, my biggest fear about writing Shutter was that I was going to have some sort of Navajo backlash.” Instead, she happily discovered, many Native readers thanked her for openly discussing the subject.
“There are Navajo Nation police officers who see death—and nurses, doctors and forensic workers,” Emerson says. “Pathologists, scientists, all these people who work with life and death. And we do our jobs because that’s what we’re trained to do, and we’re good at it. And so, this second book is about this idea of Rita realizing that she has a spiritual side that she’s not tending to.”
“It’s a really big part of your work-life balance,” she continues. “Like, you gotta worry about how much you’re putting your psyche and your mental stability and your own body on the line to get work done. And a lot of what I write about in Exposure was Rita’s own healing, embracing the ideas of Navajo traditional culture, and why it’s there to protect you.”
Emerson has experienced a few paranormal events—although quite different from her character’s encounters. Once, while teaching a summer film workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she and two others heard a strange noise in an editing room where they had been having odd technical problems with the equipment. They all turned around and watched a coffee mug move on the table, all by itself. “We saged that editing room out so fast!” says Emerson. In addition, on the same campus, she felt something grab her behind the bleachers in the black-box theater, where she and others were filming a production. “I thought maybe I just stumbled and there was something behind the curtain. But about 30 minutes later, when I got in my car, I had three huge scratches on my arm.”
Emerson has also had her own share of nightmares from difficult cases. In fact, Emerson’s late grandmother was so worried about her granddaughter that she took her to see a medicine man about a year and a half into the job. And in Exposure, Rita’s grandmother travels from the Navajo Nation town of Tohatchi—where Emerson herself grew up—to bring a medicine man to help Rita when her job becomes overwhelming.
Like Rita’s grandmother, Emerson’s grandmother played a pivotal role in her life. “She taught me to read and she was a big reader,” Emerson recalls. “She was real big on stories. She bought me my first video camera. She took me to the movies, even if she didn’t want to watch them. She just supported that idea of being a storyteller. I wrote these little stories and she always read them.” Although she died in 2001, Emerson notes, “She’s still a big part of my life. I always think about her.”
Despite her abiding interest in stories, Emerson never set out to write crime fiction, and her path to becoming a novelist has been particularly long and winding. Surprisingly, writing has never come easily to her. “It’s hard for me to sit in one place and do one thing for a long period of time,” Emerson says. Instead, her life’s dream was to make movies, and her initial attraction to film involved a touch of forensics, almost as though foreshadowing her future career.
Growing up in Tohatchi, there wasn’t much to do, so she and her friends watched VHS tapes that they rented from a man in a trailer “with like a hundred crazy strange movies in there.” That included a horror film, Faces of Death, about a pathologist who presents a variety of gruesome deaths. Once the adults left the house, Emerson recalls, “we’d go and get all of that horrible, horrible stuff that we weren’t supposed to watch, and we’d watch it right away.” Harkening back to Navajo taboos about discussing death, she adds, “So when we watched Faces of Death and didn’t explode, we figured that it’s all just a bunch of hooey.”
“When I’m writing, I feel like I’m walking through the room with a video camera and describing it for you.”
Later, when her mother took her to see Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues in a theater, Emerson was transfixed, and decided she wanted to make her own films. After studying film at the University of New Mexico, she had trouble finding a job, which is how she ended up as a forensic photographer. She blindly called a man whose audiovisual company had police contracts. “He was kind of a mean, gruff, walrus-looking guy, and his name was like 10th on the Yellow Pages list.” Eventually, she says, she did photography as well as video work for him, “because I was the only one who could put up with him. He was so mean.”
In addition to photographing crime scenes, part of her work was making what she calls “day in the life” documentaries to show how peoples’ lives had been compromised by injuries. “My job,” she explains, “was to get the worst stuff on camera and make sure companies settled cases before they got to a jury. Because they knew if the jury saw my video, they would give them way too much money.” She adds, “I would have dreams about these people for months. I think the live people were the ones that stayed with me more than the dead people.”
However, she says that in both her forensics work and her fiction, focusing carefully on the details of dead bodies helps humanize victims. “I would always think, ‘Oh my God, this is so horrible. This is somebody’s daughter. This is somebody’s mom.’ That’s where my mind always went. And so, by talking about the details, and everything that you could possibly say about who they are and what happened to them kind of honors them in a way.”
It’s no surprise, then, that Emerson’s prose is so immediate, her descriptions so vivid. “When you’re doing a documentary and you want people to understand who a person is, you film their room, you film their hands,” she explains. “You show how dirty their fingernails are. You look at their shoes, where they live, what the town is like, all of that stuff. I think I just attack stories the same way as I would attack a visual story.” She adds, “When I’m writing, I feel like I’m walking through the room with a video camera and describing it for you.”
Plus, she says, “I think people don’t realize how long you’re there [photographing crime scenes]. On TV, it’s like everybody’s in and out in 10 minutes, but when you have a big murder scene or you’ve got something like that first scene in Exposure where there’s a whole family, that could take two or three days of processing. You take thousands of photographs, pictures of every little thing, even if you don’t think it matters. You spend a lot of time out in the boonies by yourself photographing really weird things, or in strange positions, underneath vehicles. So, I think just giving readers the breadth of how many photographs Rita takes gives people a real idea of how hard it is to do the work physically.”
Emerson’s years of forensic work had a bonus of giving her access to her boss’s cameras and editing equipment. She began making her own movies as well, and she and her husband, Kelly Byars (also a filmmaker), formed a production company called Reel Indian Pictures. Byars is a member of the Choctaw Nation, and heritage is a primary focus for both. Their documentaries include The Mayor of Shiprock, about a group of young Navajos who meet each week to improve their small community in Shiprock, New Mexico.
Emerson also enrolled in a creative writing MFA program at the University of New Mexico, obtaining her master’s degree in 2015. While there, she began writing stories about her grandmother, and was also writing about some of her forensic cases as background for a possible documentary about Navajos who work in forensics. The resulting pages were what she describes as “a weird collection of research and stories”—and she couldn’t figure out how to unify the hodgepodge.
At the same time, Emerson enrolled in a 16-week CSI course offered by the Albuquerque Police Department, hoping to learn more about forensic science and technical procedures. The topic of the first session was a terrible case involving a woman who jumped off a highway bridge, with accompanying graphic photos. “I think half of our class didn’t come back after that,” she recalls. “It was brutal. But I went home and wrote about that case.”
“. . . it shouldn’t have to take our deaths to be able to tell our stories.”
When she presented the chapter to her MFA class, her mentor, novelist Sherman Alexie, responded, “I’m so disturbed. I’m sickened by that chapter. But I want you to make that your first chapter. And add six to 10 pages more, because I also want to know every detail.” Emerson took his advice. “Once I did that, everything else started to fall into place. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is what I’m supposed to be doing.’ ” Suddenly, her musings and observations coalesced into a first draft of her debut novel, Shutter.
All told, however, the writing process took 10 years—quite different from the almost rapid-fire way she wrote its follow-up. “I really had 10 years to lament over every page of that first book,” she says. “This time, I just had to move on.” One thing that helped was that she was also working on a docuseries (Crossing the Line) about border town violence and death in several communities surrounding the Navajo Nation, including Albuquerque and Gallup, New Mexico—both of which are crime scene locations in Exposure. “It was easy for me to research both things at the same time,” Emerson explains. “And it just kind of fell into place.” She adds that she has witnessed policing from the perspective of officers, the court system and lawyers, but also notes, “It’s a different kind of experience for people of color. Policing is about enforcing white laws on brown bodies. I think a lot of people think police protect them, but brown and Black people don’t believe that police are there to protect them. And I think that’s probably why I speak about that a lot in my stories, and about corruption.”
Just as Rita Todacheene speaks for the crime victims who can no longer voice their stories, Emerson works to champion Native women in both her books and films. “I really feel like there’s not another group of women who are more underrepresented than Native women,” she says. “They’re never talked about; they’re never given a chance. And that’s why I feel the thing I have to do is give them power or give them a voice. Now, because of the missing and murdered Indigenous women’s movement, Native women are more visible. But it shouldn’t have to take our deaths to be able to tell our stories.”
Emerson is already hard at work on the third book about Rita—although fans are likely to clamor for more after that, even though her story began as a planned trilogy. “I may take a break after the third book and write a different book,” Emerson says. “But I have a feeling that somebody is going to try to resurrect Rita at some point, and it’ll be tough to keep her down as a character.”
Photo of Ramona Emerson by Ungelbah Davila Shivers.
For the forensic photographer-turned-mystery novelist, humanizing the victims of violent crimes is more than just a profession: It’s a calling.
Sid Sharp’s picture book Bog Myrtle starts as an intriguing fairy tale about two very different sisters: eternally optimistic Beatrice and forever grumpy Magnolia, who live “alone in a hideous, drafty old house” and “are so poor that they ate rats for breakfast and cockroaches for lunch.”
The action starts when Beatrice decides to make a sweater for Magnolia, who gripes about being cold. Since they have no money, Beatrice, who loves nature and crafts, heads to the forest to look for helpful treasures, and eventually encounters a monster named Bog Myrtle. Surprising things happen every step of the way, and Sharp’s sense of humor shines through—for instance, with a knitting store called “Knot in My Back Yarn.”
Bog Myrtle offers Beatrice magic silk, which allows her to knit a truly splendid gift for Magnolia—who immediately sees potential for profit. As Magnolia launches a magic sweater business that becomes increasingly exploitative, Sharp transforms the tale into a sophisticated, humorous fable about sustainability, corporate greed and workers’ rights. Sharp manages to integrate these themes so seamlessly that they never feel strident; readers will simply find themselves cheering when the good guys beat the villain.
Bold, contrasting colors imbue Sharp’s eye-catching illustrations with a modern, energetic vibe. Bog Myrtle offers a fun-filled yet serious look at sustainability and corporate accountability. Who would have even thought that possible? Sharp’s wizardry makes it happen.
Who would have thought it possible to create an entertaining children's story about sustainability and corporate accountability? Sid Sharp's fun-filled fable, Bog Myrtle, is just that.
John the Skeleton is a wonderfully quirky story about a life-size model skeleton who “retires” from his schoolroom job as an anatomy model to live with an elderly couple on their farm in Estonia. He quickly becomes a part of the family, which includes two young grandchildren who frequently visit. There’s nothing scary or ghoulish here; instead, John’s presence allows Gramps and Grams to begin coming to terms with their eventual deaths. With 64 pages, plenty of illustrations and very short chapters, the book works equally well as a read-aloud for sophisticated younger readers or as a chapter book for solo readers.
The understated humor in Estonian writer Triinu Laan’s prose—as well as Adam Cullen’s translation—is ever present. Gramps makes wooden phalanges for John’s missing finger bones, and gives John his old musty coat “with two medals still pinned to it: one for donating blood and the other for being a good tractor driver.” The family includes John in all of their adventures. They help John make snow angels, and John even takes a bath with the grandkids.
Marja-Liisa Plats’ black-and-white illustrations, often accentuated by well-placed shades of fuchsia (a blushing face, a sled amid the snow), are full of whimsy. Her linework is perfect for this scruffy, lovable couple and their farmhouse world, including their outdoor summer kitchen. One of the book’s many delights is that John never reacts in any way; his entire “personality” is simply what this family imagines it to be. Nonetheless, he comforts them greatly, especially when Gramps and Grams begin to show signs of confusion.
There are particularly touching scenes at the end, when the book confronts death. John the Skeleton is an endearing story that helps normalize death while highlighting the enduring power of love.
John the Skeleton is an endearing book that helps normalize death while highlighting the enduring power of love.
With Vikki VanSickle’s compelling rhyming couplets and Jensine Eckwall’s lush, moody illustrations, Into the Goblin Market has all the makings of a modern classic, while giving a delightful nod to European fairy tales. The book is a tribute to Christina Rosetti’s 1859 poem, “Goblin Market,” about sisters Laura and Lizzie. VanSickle has used the original to create a similar tale about two young sisters who seem to live alone in a fairy tale-like world “on a farm, not far from here.” Millie is quiet and bookish, while Mina, with a head full of wild, curly hair, is daring and always ready for adventure. One night, Mina sneaks away to the Goblin Market, even though Millie has warned her, “The Goblin Market isn’t safe. / It’s a tricky, wicked place.”
When Millie awakes and sees that Mina has disappeared, she consults her library and takes several items that end up providing invaluable protection. Eckwall’s intricate, woodcut-inspired art vividly conveys the magic and danger that awaits. Occasional red accents in these black-and-white ink drawings highlight objects such as the hooded cape Millie wears as she sets off, looking just like Red Riding Hood—and, indeed, a shaggy black wolf is the first thing she encounters.
Once she enters the market, “Everywhere that Millie looked / was like a nightmare from her books.” There are strange sights galore, including a multitude of goblins and an evil-looking witch, but there’s no sign of Mina, whom Millie knows is in trouble. The pages are definitely a feast for the imagination (although the very young may find them frightening).
Both sisters use their wits admirably to escape the many dangers, and there’s a wonderful surprise at the end, just when all seems to be lost. Into the Goblin Market is a delicious treat for those yearning for a bit of frightful adventure.
A tribute to the work of Victorian poet Christina Rosetti, Into the Goblin Market is a delicious treat for those yearning for a bit of frightful adventure.
Be careful what you wish for. That’s definitely true for Hannah, the seventh grader whose journal constitutes Remy Lai’s Read at Your Own Risk. Hannah and her friends search for a diversion while “some boring author” comes to their school assembly to “talk about his spooky books, which I bet aren’t even spooky.” Instead of attending, they decide to venture into the school attic and play a Ouija board-style game they call “Spirit of the Coin.” After their session, however, Hannah quickly discovers that she is haunted by an evil spirit, who continues to terrify her, and even writes in her journal in red ink.
The journal format will definitely appeal to middle grade readers, making the story all the more intimate and seemingly real. Nonetheless, be forewarned: As the cover filled with skulls and dripping with blood would suggest, this book is not for the squeamish. While many readers will revel in its thrills and chills, others may be completely terrified, especially by the frequent blood splatters, horrific dental details and the hospitalization of the narrator’s young brother.
Those whom those details don’t scare off may easily find themselves reading it more than once, looking for clues about the evil spirit. Read at Your Own Risk is a dynamic display of scary storytelling and compelling, haunting graphics that challenges readers to create their own journals. Lai leans into the mysterious as she wields her craft, noting, “Telling a story is like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. Only the storyteller has the box and knows what the whole picture looks like.”
Read at Your Own Risk is a dynamic display of scary storytelling and compelling, haunting graphics that challenges readers to create their own journals.
Nadia Ahmed’s The Ghost Who Was Afraid of Everything is not only a charming Halloween tale, but also an excellent year-round story about facing one’s fears. Young Finn is scared of many things, including tree branches, butterflies, the color orange and flying. On Halloween, he stays home in his attic—noisy humans also make him anxious—while his older brother and sister have a grand time careening through the air. However, when they fail to bring back Finn his favorite Halloween treat (chocolate bats), he swears that he will fly to get his own next year.
Ahmed’s prose perfectly captures Finn’s trepidation in just a handful of words that will resonate with young readers: “When Finn is afraid, his stomach swoops, his hands sweat, and he can’t move.” Happily, Finn’s gradual self-regulated program of exposure therapy works! He starts out small, simply touching a leafless branch “for one whole minute.”
Ahmed’s whimsical illustrations are mostly in black and white at the start, except for flashes of that dreaded orange. Despite this limited palette, the pages are wonderfully appealing, never scary or dull. Finn is a simply drawn ghost, but somehow his spirit—pardon the pun—and resolution shine through on every page. As he tackles his fears one by one, color gradually enters his world. The final spread is a glorious ode to Halloween orange, as well as other small splashes of the rainbow. Ghoulishly great, The Ghost Who Was Afraid of Everything will inspire readers sidelined by their own jitters.
The Ghost Who Was Afraid of Everything is a ghoulishly great Halloween story as well as an inspirational guide for readers sidelined by their own jitters.
Godfather Death is a lively retelling of a Grimm fairy tale about a poor fisherman looking for a godfather for his newborn son. The fisherman rejects God’s offer because he doesn’t feel God treats people fairly, especially since the fisherman and his family live in such poverty. He is smart enough to also reject the devil’s offer—but when Death comes along, he believes he has finally found an honest man. After the christening, Death lets the fisherman in on a scheme that makes him a rich man, but ultimately backfires in a tragic way.
As the fisherman’s captivating quest unfolds, Sally Nicholls weaves in plenty of humor: Christening guests stare at Death—a skeleton with his silver scythe and long black cloak—as “everyone tried very hard to be polite to the baby’s godfather.” When this skeleton figure eats food, “everyone wondered where it went.”
Julia Sarda illustrates the tale in a limited palette of orange, mustard yellow, dark green and black, imbuing the book with an intriguing, stylized vibe reminiscent of old fairy tales. Her eye-catching illustrations will help readers understand that this is a tale meant to impart wisdom. Note that, like the original, the ending is abrupt and not at all happy. Nonetheless, Godfather Death is a memorable story that’s bound to encourage interesting discussions about life, death and honesty.
Based on a Grimm fairy tale, Godfather Death is a memorable story that’s bound to encourage interesting discussions about life, death and honesty.
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A seemingly doomed wedding is the focal point of Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red, a propulsive novel that further justifies this Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s acclaim. Time and time again, with just a few words of perfectly placed description—like “the layaway bridal gown hung like an apparition on the outside of the closet door”—Erdrich lends Shakespearean tones to her carefully drawn scenes.
Kismet Poe is a likable, confused teenager who desperately hopes that college will rescue her from the suffocating boredom she feels in Tabor, North Dakota, in 2008. Impulsively, she agrees to marry Gary Geist, a handsome young man who will eventually inherit two giant sugar beet farms. Quarterback Gary, however, is haunted by a tragedy involving his football teammates, the details of which are gradually and tantalizingly revealed. Kismet also remains attracted to another boyfriend, Hugo Dumach—a lovable, smart, homeschooled boy who “long[s] to challenge Gary to a duel.” He works in his mother’s bookstore, but plans to head to the oil fields to earn enough money to win Kismet over. In the meantime, Hugo and Kismet read and discuss Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary as they try to resolve their romantic predicament. “Whatever Emma would do,” Kismet concludes, “I should do the opposite.”
Erdrich is a masterful literary juggler, commanding a richly drawn cast of characters whose encounters overflow with humor and pathos, as well as a variety of compelling storylines. Kismet’s father goes missing, for instance, and seems to have embezzled the church renovation fund. Her mother, Crystal, makes “bread from scratch not because it was artisanal but because it was cheaper.” Crystal and Kismet “had come to know on some level that they were the real Americans—the rattled, scratching, always-in-debt Americans.” These, of course, are the people who populate Erdrich’s many novels.
The title refers to the Red River of the North, which snakes its way through the Red River Valley. This is very much a novel about the land and the people who have farmed it and fought to control it. Erdrich comments on the greed of agribusiness, noting that “this nutritionless white killer,” sugar, “is depleting the earth’s finest cropland.” Yet the book is also, as one character describes Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, “about what’s most important . . . this kind of love between a parent and a child.”
With The Mighty Red, Erdrich takes on monumental themes in what just might be a new American classic.
Following a teen love triangle in a North Dakota community dominated by sugar beet farming, Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red might just be a new American classic.
Nadia Ahmed’s The Ghost Who Was Afraid of Everything is not only a charming Halloween tale, but also an excellent year-round story about facing one’s fears. Young Finn is scared of many things, including tree branches, butterflies, the color orange and flying. On Halloween, he stays home in his attic—noisy humans also make him anxious—while his older brother and sister have a grand time careening through the air. However, when they fail to bring back Finn his favorite Halloween treat (chocolate bats), he swears that he will fly to get his own next year.
Ahmed’s prose perfectly captures Finn’s trepidation in just a handful of words that will resonate with young readers: “When Finn is afraid, his stomach swoops, his hands sweat, and he can’t move.” Happily, Finn’s gradual self-regulated program of exposure therapy works! He starts out small, simply touching a leafless branch “for one whole minute.”
Ahmed’s whimsical illustrations are mostly in black and white at the start, except for flashes of that dreaded orange. Despite this limited palette, the pages are wonderfully appealing, never scary or dull. Finn is a simply drawn ghost, but somehow his spirit—pardon the pun—and resolution shine through on every page. As he tackles his fears one by one, color gradually enters his world. The final spread is a glorious ode to Halloween orange, as well as other small splashes of the rainbow. Ghoulishly great, The Ghost Who Was Afraid of Everything will inspire readers sidelined by their own jitters.
The Ghost Who Was Afraid of Everything is a ghoulishly great Halloween story as well as an inspirational guide for readers sidelined by their own jitters.
Be careful what you wish for. That’s definitely true for Hannah, the seventh grader whose journal constitutes Remy Lai’s Read at Your Own Risk. Hannah and her friends search for a diversion while “some boring author” comes to their school assembly to “talk about his spooky books, which I bet aren’t even spooky.” Instead of attending, they decide to venture into the school attic and play a Ouija board-style game they call “Spirit of the Coin.” After their session, however, Hannah quickly discovers that she is haunted by an evil spirit, who continues to terrify her, and even writes in her journal in red ink.
The journal format will definitely appeal to middle grade readers, making the story all the more intimate and seemingly real. Nonetheless, be forewarned: As the cover filled with skulls and dripping with blood would suggest, this book is not for the squeamish. While many readers will revel in its thrills and chills, others may be completely terrified, especially by the frequent blood splatters, horrific dental details and the hospitalization of the narrator’s young brother.
Those whom those details don’t scare off may easily find themselves reading it more than once, looking for clues about the evil spirit. Read at Your Own Risk is a dynamic display of scary storytelling and compelling, haunting graphics that challenges readers to create their own journals. Lai leans into the mysterious as she wields her craft, noting, “Telling a story is like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. Only the storyteller has the box and knows what the whole picture looks like.”
Read at Your Own Risk is a dynamic display of scary storytelling and compelling, haunting graphics that challenges readers to create their own journals.
John the Skeleton is a wonderfully quirky story about a life-size model skeleton who “retires” from his schoolroom job as an anatomy model to live with an elderly couple on their farm in Estonia. He quickly becomes a part of the family, which includes two young grandchildren who frequently visit. There’s nothing scary or ghoulish here; instead, John’s presence allows Gramps and Grams to begin coming to terms with their eventual deaths. With 64 pages, plenty of illustrations and very short chapters, the book works equally well as a read-aloud for sophisticated younger readers or as a chapter book for solo readers.
The understated humor in Estonian writer Triinu Laan’s prose—as well as Adam Cullen’s translation—is ever present. Gramps makes wooden phalanges for John’s missing finger bones, and gives John his old musty coat “with two medals still pinned to it: one for donating blood and the other for being a good tractor driver.” The family includes John in all of their adventures. They help John make snow angels, and John even takes a bath with the grandkids.
Marja-Liisa Plats’ black-and-white illustrations, often accentuated by well-placed shades of fuchsia (a blushing face, a sled amid the snow), are full of whimsy. Her linework is perfect for this scruffy, lovable couple and their farmhouse world, including their outdoor summer kitchen. One of the book’s many delights is that John never reacts in any way; his entire “personality” is simply what this family imagines it to be. Nonetheless, he comforts them greatly, especially when Gramps and Grams begin to show signs of confusion.
There are particularly touching scenes at the end, when the book confronts death. John the Skeleton is an endearing story that helps normalize death while highlighting the enduring power of love.
John the Skeleton is an endearing book that helps normalize death while highlighting the enduring power of love.
With Vikki VanSickle’s compelling rhyming couplets and Jensine Eckwall’s lush, moody illustrations, Into the Goblin Market has all the makings of a modern classic, while giving a delightful nod to European fairy tales. The book is a tribute to Christina Rosetti’s 1859 poem, “Goblin Market,” about sisters Laura and Lizzie. VanSickle has used the original to create a similar tale about two young sisters who seem to live alone in a fairy tale-like world “on a farm, not far from here.” Millie is quiet and bookish, while Mina, with a head full of wild, curly hair, is daring and always ready for adventure. One night, Mina sneaks away to the Goblin Market, even though Millie has warned her, “The Goblin Market isn’t safe. / It’s a tricky, wicked place.”
When Millie awakes and sees that Mina has disappeared, she consults her library and takes several items that end up providing invaluable protection. Eckwall’s intricate, woodcut-inspired art vividly conveys the magic and danger that awaits. Occasional red accents in these black-and-white ink drawings highlight objects such as the hooded cape Millie wears as she sets off, looking just like Red Riding Hood—and, indeed, a shaggy black wolf is the first thing she encounters.
Once she enters the market, “Everywhere that Millie looked / was like a nightmare from her books.” There are strange sights galore, including a multitude of goblins and an evil-looking witch, but there’s no sign of Mina, whom Millie knows is in trouble. The pages are definitely a feast for the imagination (although the very young may find them frightening).
Both sisters use their wits admirably to escape the many dangers, and there’s a wonderful surprise at the end, just when all seems to be lost. Into the Goblin Market is a delicious treat for those yearning for a bit of frightful adventure.
A tribute to the work of Victorian poet Christina Rosetti, Into the Goblin Market is a delicious treat for those yearning for a bit of frightful adventure.
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