Linda M. Castellitto

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

The Bad Ones

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

The shocking disappearance of four people infuses suburban Palmetto, Illinois, with confusion and fear in Melissa Albert’s gripping supernatural horror thriller, The Bad Ones.

Among the missing is high school junior Nora Powell’s best friend, Becca Cross. As children, the duo established a creative partnership and spent hours in the woods together, with Nora writing stories about the goddesses they imagined, while Becca took photographs. When Becca’s parents died, Nora did her best to absorb Becca’s grief and be a source of constancy in an unstable world. But as Becca’s demeanor turned darker, revealing a discomfiting desire for vengeance, the girls began to drift apart.

As The Bad Ones begins, they haven’t spoken for months. Nonetheless, when Nora gets a text from Becca in the middle of the night, she rushes to Becca’s house and is nonplussed to discover she isn’t there. Nora’s bewilderment transforms into alarm when she realizes nobody has any idea what might’ve befallen Becca or the other three missing people, thanks to a bizarre lack of witnesses or evidence.

Tentative hope arrives in the form of clues Becca left for Nora, many of them referencing the goddess-centric activities of their youth and the urban legend that inspired them. Perhaps, if Nora can uncover the origins of the goddess game Palmetto students have been playing for decades, she can figure out where Becca went—and what she may have done. Nora eventually allows her classmates—shy, handsome James and amateur reporter Ruth—to join her efforts. Can they unravel the mysteries swirling around that fateful night before someone else disappears?

Albert, bestselling author of the Hazel Wood series and Our Crooked Hearts, expertly alternates between high school mundanity and supernatural spookiness, complemented by an impressive flair for the atmospheric. The Bad Ones is a compelling, often delightfully creepy coming-of-age tale that thoughtfully explores the nature of friendship, grief and the perilous power of unwavering belief.

 

The Bad Ones is a compelling, often delightfully creepy coming-of-age tale that thoughtfully explores the nature of friendship, grief and the perilous power of unwavering belief.
Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

The Hunter

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Careful listening and watchful waiting are essential to every investigator’s toolkit, and the characters in award-winning Dublin Murder Squad author Tana French’s suspenseful, slow-burning thriller The Hunter elevate those skills to an art form—not just former Chicago detective Cal Hooper but also his neighbors in Ardnakelty, a tiny village on Ireland’s west coast.

Since readers met Cal in 2020’s The Searcher, he and 15-year-old villager Trey Reddy have established a close rapport and started a carpentry business. Cal is also dating Lena, who’s conflicted about remaining in her hometown: Ardnakelty is lovely, but the shadow of the mountain often feels foreboding, and its residents revel in gossip and grudges. 

The village can be a bit of a pressure cooker, and is especially so this summer: It’s exceptionally hot and dry, and the locals are edgy about the prospect of crop failure and financial hardship. The farmers are getting bored, and as Cal’s amusingly insouciant yet vaguely menacing neighbor Mart tells him, “Boredom makes a man’s mind restless, and then he tries to cure the restlessness by doing foolish shite.”

That’s when Trey’s father, Johnny, reappears after four years away doing who-knows-what. He’s quite charming, wholly unreliable and has a proposition for the farmers: There’s gold in the mountain, and some has washed down to the land—perhaps their land. Would they like to invest in a plan to extract that gold, as led by Johnny and his business partner, a Londoner named Cillian Rushborough? The farmers are intrigued, while Cal, Lena and Trey are skeptical. Their trepidation intensifies as the planning process stirs up hostility among the townspeople, and rises to a fever pitch when a man is found murdered. Who among them did it? And who might be next? 

The Hunter’s finely crafted internal monologues and nerve-wracking dialogues ably convey the unique tensions of living in a remote small town, especially when one is uncertain which neighbor (or neighbors) might’ve committed a crime. It’s an immersive, thought-provoking tale that revels in the quiet moments—whether that of conversational gaps more revealing than spoken words, or a place of natural beauty that offers respite but never promises peace.

Tana French’s immersive, thought-provoking The Hunter revels in the quiet moments, but knows true peace is elusive.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

A Friend for Eddy

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

A case of mistaken identity blossoms into a beautiful friendship in Ann Kim Ha’s clever and heartwarming picture book A Friend for Eddy. 

Eddy, an adorable orange goldfish, lives in a clear bowl with only decorative rocks and a plant for company. He swims and blows bubbles to his heart’s content, but while “his favorite game, / chase-your-tail” is highly entertaining, he longs for someone else to play with. 

One delightful day, a small yellow fish outside taps on the glass of the bowl and joins Eddy in a game of tag. The next day, the fish returns for more hijinks, with another friend in tow! Not only does this new buddy look exactly like the first yellow fish, he’s just as much fun.

It’s an idyllic new state of affairs. Now that he’s experienced the joys of camaraderie, Eddy wants to join his two pals outside, so he takes a big risk by swimming in fast circles, resulting in a whirlpool that propels him out of his bowl. Soaring through the air is glorious (“He felt weightless and free!”) but alas, short-lived, as Eddy plummets to the table his bowl rests upon.

The book transforms into a bit of a thriller as Eddy realizes what readers discovered a few pages ago: Those two yellow fish are not fish at all. They’re a cat’s eyes! Young readers will gasp as the cat rises up—mouth wide open, pointy teeth on display—and draws Eddy into its gaping maw. What will happen to Eddy now? 

Those who connected with Ha’s Walter Finds His Voice will be similarly inspired by the intrepid Eddy, and appreciate his and his feline friend’s ability to buck conventional wisdom and forge a close bond. A Friend for Eddy’s richly hued, evocative visuals convey an exciting range of emotions while drawing readers into Eddy’s watery world. Its upbeat text and surprising storyline highlight the upsides of trying new things—and being open to the idea that friends can be found in the most unlikely places.

A Friend for Eddy’s upbeat text and surprising storyline highlight the upsides of trying new things—and being open to the idea that friends can be found in the most unlikely places.
NonfictionNature

Twelve Trees

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Daniel Lewis’ informative, engrossing, often poetic Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future is a veritable wonderland of fascinating facts.

Did you know that “a mature redwood adds, on average, a ton of wood to its mass every year”? Or that the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research (LTRR) was founded in Arizona in 1937, and there are 100-plus tree ring labs worldwide? Or that, contrary to its unassuming appearance, “a pine needle is akin to a skyscraper, bustling with movement and life,” including air- and water-movement systems not unlike HVAC and plumbing?

Twelve Trees is also an engagingly written experiential memoir of the author’s quest to learn more about the trees he views as crucial to human life—past, present and future. From California (where he’s senior curator for the History of Science and Technology at the Huntington Library and teaches at Caltech) to Easter Island, central Africa to Amazonian Peru and beyond, Lewis leads readers on an awe-inspiring tour of a dozen trees that, he writes, “have been on long journeys, have many accomplices as well as enemies, and need our help to survive.”

After all, trees “populate our daily lives. They’ve been part of our sight lines and metaphors, our byways, our contexts.” They record our history: At the LTRR, the author learned how bristlecone pine rings bear evidence of drought, flood and fire, thus providing data that scientists and scholars can use to analyze and predict such events. And they can be vital to culture, health and government all at once. In India, the sandalwood tree’s wood is used in important ceremonies; its oil has “helped millions through both folk and modern medicine”; and it is the subject of numerous laws regarding trade, harvesting, poaching and preservation.

Lewis is fiercely protective of and endlessly enthusiastic about the precious leafy entities—eucalyptus, ebony, baobab, olive and more—that enrich our lives and support our very existence. Twelve Trees offers extensive insight into the ways in which humans and trees are interconnected, for better or worse, and urges readers to remember that the “salvation of trees can be the salvation of humans.”

 

Written with boundless enthusiasm by Daniel Lewis, Twelve Trees offers extensive insight into the ways in which humans and trees are interconnected.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Department stores come to life in Ben Guterson’s artful adventure

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Some of Ben Guterson’s most treasured childhood memories center around two now-defunct grand old department stores in downtown Seattle: Frederick & Nelson and The Bon Marché. They “were absolutely places of magic for me,” the author reminisces in a call from his home in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.

“At Christmastime, I would go to the second floor and take the escalator down to the first floor. . . . [A]ll the decorations, the trees, the glitter, the tinsel, the displays, the lights, the color, everything slowly revealed itself to me and I’d think I was descending into the heart of winter wonderland,” he says. “I fell in love with department stores because of that.”

Guterson’s appreciation of those bygone commerce centers and cultural touchstones is on marvelously magical display in The World-Famous Nine, his inventive, exciting middle grade mystery-adventure novel set in the storied Number Nine Plaza department store (aka “The Nine”).

The Nine is a blend of cleverly cultivated experiences and artfully arranged merchandise all under one roof. Unlike other department stores, that roof is 19 stories in the air and has an enormous Ferris wheel on top of it. The luxurious floors below contain a monorail, a display with a real iceberg and real penguins, an art gallery, rotating restaurants and more.

On the very first page of The World-Famous Nine, 11-year-old Zander Olinga rides an escalator down to the store’s main floor and into an astonishing new chapter of his life. What’s meant to be a fun five-week visit with his glamorous grandmother Zina Winebee, who owns The Nine, while his professor parents go on a research trip, soon turns into something much more thrilling and dangerous. Zander must undertake an urgent quest to unravel long-held family secrets by solving peculiar puzzles and tracking down a lost object that will protect The Nine and everyone in it from a terrible fate.

Read our review of ‘The World-Famous Nine.’

That’s a tall order for a kid, to say the least, but Zander’s new friend Natasha Novikov is confident the two of them can figure things out. He’s afraid of heights but great at solving puzzles, and she knows the store inside and out. Besides, one of Zander’s hobbies is creating mandalas, which are vital to their mission, if the ten-foot-tall sandstone boulder with “carved elaborate circular patterns” that has pride of place in The Nine is any indication. (Hint: it is.)

Guterson’s own affinity for mandalas—he draws them daily—not only inspired key elements of the complex mystery in The World-Famous Nine but also the artwork that appears within. Kristina Kister’s wonderful illustrations immerse readers in the dazzling world and unique denizens of The Nine, and Guterson’s impressively detailed mandalas grace the book’s pages as well. “I highly recommend it,” Guterson says about drawing mandalas. “It’s a really cool, creative and relaxing thing to do. I don’t want to sound too new-agey here, but . . . to engage in a creative act that’s not verbal or word-oriented in any way, I have found that to be extremely helpful.”

While the mandalas will be new to Guterson’s fans, The World-Famous Nine’s plethora of puzzles and wordplay will feel happily familiar to readers who delighted in the code-cracking, riddle-solving aspects of his previous books: the Winterhouse trilogy (Winterhouse, the first in the series and Guterson’s debut, was an Edgar Award and Agatha Award finalist) and The Einsteins of Vista Point.

Although the author now has multiple mysteries under his writerly belt, he still finds it challenging to strike just the right balance: “You don’t want to make the mystery or the solving of clues so easy that kids can spot it right away and then get frustrated with your hero, like, ‘Why is that main character so dumb when I figured it out already?’” But, he says, “You also don’t want to make it so hard that, when it’s revealed, someone says, ‘No one ever really could’ve figured that out!’”

“I think when you’re that age and you discover a book or an author that you love, it can just completely solidify a love of reading.”

Guterson has found that his true satisfaction and joy is writing for middle grade readers. In fact, he’s got even more books on the way: The World-Famous Nine is the first in a series, with its sequel, The Hidden Workshop of Javier Preston forthcoming. After all, he says, “I think when you’re that age and you discover a book or an author that you love, it can just completely solidify a love of reading. I find it really exciting to think that maybe my books . . . could do for a kid what the books I love did for me when I was that age.”

Photo of Ben Guterson by Harvey Photography.

The author incorporates magic and mandalas in The World-Famous Nine.
Mystery & SuspenseSuspenseNoir

My Favorite Scar

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

By the time she was 12, Ámbar Mondragón knew how to treat bullet wounds. When she turned 13, her father, Victor, gave her a sawed-off shotgun plus shooting and hot-wiring lessons. And as Nicolás Ferraro’s My Favorite Scar opens, 15-year-old Ámbar is tending to her father’s latest injury: He’s returned from a night out with a bullet hole in his upper chest and his murdered friend Giovanni’s body in the passenger seat of his car.

To Ámbar, this horrifying turn of events isn’t all that shocking. Rather, it’s just another terrible moment in the life she’s lived since the age of 9, when Grandma Nuria, who cared for Ámbar after her mother abandoned her, had a fatal heart attack. Dad came to get her, and Ámbar since adjusted to an existence rife with violence and loneliness, one where she wonders if she’ll ever feel happy or secure. After all, while the titular “favorite scar” refers to Dad’s tattoo bearing her name, “He might carry my name on his skin, but he never held me in his arms. He chose my name, but he was never around until he didn’t have any other choice.”

Now, Ámbar has to tag along as Dad embarks on a singularly vicious road trip, determined to exact bloody revenge on those who betrayed him and Giovanni. My Favorite Scar is a nihilistic road novel of unrelenting bleakness that takes readers on a hair-raising tour of Argentina’s criminal underworld. The duo stop at bars, burial sites and hideout shacks where Dad delivers interrogations, warnings and beatings as Ámbar plays lookout or getaway driver, often with sawed-off shotgun in hand.

As in Cruz, his first novel translated into English, Ferraro explores the effects of criminals’ choices on children who become unwitting and/or unwilling accomplices. His deftly created suspense builds with every mile driven, every fake ID used, every drop of blood spilled. Will the cycle of violence ever end? Will Ámbar ever be anything but “what other people have left behind”? My Favorite Scar is a pitch-black coming-of-age tale that reverberates with oft-poetically expressed pain and sadness—and maybe, just maybe, a hint of hope.

Nicolas Ferraro’s My Favorite Scar is a nihilistic, hair-raising road trip through Argentina’s criminal underworld.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

The World-Famous Nine

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Number Nine Plaza, most often called “The Nine,” is a uniquely dazzling place: “the largest, most famous, and most extraordinary department store in the entire world.” And Zander Olinga is lucky enough to be the grandson of the woman who owns it, Zina Winebee, who is going to look after him for several weeks while his parents are away on a research trip.

But as 11-year-old Zander soon learns in Ben Guterson’s imaginative and entertaining mystery-adventure novel The World-Famous Nine, his arrival coincides with what Grandma Zina considers “a very challenging time for the store.” It’s the 90th anniversary of the disappearance of a special sandstone slab with a mandala on it that, according to legend, would touch off massive devastation if it fell into the wrong hands.

Ben Guterson discusses the Christmas magic of department stores in our interview.

There’s a Ferris wheel atop this 19-story skyscraper, and the interior contains wonders like a monorail, a Tiffany glass ceiling and a real iceberg. Aside from being gobsmacked by the fabulous scope of The Nine, Zander is determined to solve the mysteries rising up from his family’s past and save the store. Natasha Novikov, the 11-year-old daughter of The Nine’s plumber, decides to help him. Currently spending several hours a week swinging high above the building’s restaurants to entertain their patrons, she loves The Nine and knows almost every inch of the place. It also helps that the artistic Zander was already fascinated with mandalas and puzzles, and Natalie knows where odd inscriptions are hidden around the building.

Guterson, known for his Winterhouse Trilogy and The Einsteins of Vista Point, once again makes excellent use of his trademark ability to create puzzles and conjure clues in this innovative tale that pits clever and intrepid preteens against dark forces, dodgy family secrets and dastardly adults. Readers will breathlessly turn the pages as they wonder: Can the duo solve the mysteries of The Nine in time to save it from those who wish it—and them—ill? Impressive illustrations by Kristina Kister capture the wild grandeur of The Nine, and hand-drawn mandalas by Guterson himself add to the book’s uniquely appealing mystique.

Ben Guterson makes excellent use of his trademark ability to create puzzles and conjure clues in this innovative tale that pits clever and intrepid preteens against dark forces, dodgy family secrets and dastardly adults.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

I Hope This Doesn’t Find You

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

For 10 years, Julius Gong has lived rent-free in 17-year-old Sadie Wen’s head. He’s her school co-captain at Woodvale Academy and “the most prominent source of pain in my life.” The two compete in academics, athletics and anything else possible to compete in. They communicate mainly via taunting, eye-rolling and impatient sighs.

But despite frequently feeling intense animosity toward Julius (“Just seeing him makes me want to put my fist through something hard—ideally, his jaw”), Sadie hardly ever talks about it or any of her other frustrations. Instead, she vents in email drafts addressed to Julius and also people like Rosie, who won last year’s science fair with work she stole from Sadie, and Ms. Johnson, a teacher who refused to round up an 89.5 to a 90.

The secret emails have helped Sadie maintain her amicable persona, but everything changes when the drafts are somehow sent out all at once in the middle of a school day. After years of assiduously avoiding conflict, Sadie’s suddenly faced with a situation she might not be able to fix or apologize for. What is she going to do?

For starters, she’s mortified at the people now mad at her for being mad at them—and shocked when it turns out that not only is her fabulous BFF Abigail on her side, but Julius just might be, too. Is it possible he’s also been hiding some complicated feelings?

Fans of rivals-to-lovers romances will delight in I Hope This Doesn’t Find You and its protagonists’ attempts to find common ground in heady will-they-won’t-they scenes that deftly capture the two overachievers’ struggles with vulnerability. They’ll root for Sadie to consider what she wants rather than devoting her life to being the best people-pleaser ever. Chinese Australian author Ann Liang’s heartfelt third novel (after If You Could See the Sun and This Time It’s Real) is an engaging story steeped in humor and empathy, encouraging readers to consider that relentlessly striving for success might not be the best path to a truly rewarding life.

Fans of rivals-to-lovers romances will delight in I Hope This Doesn’t Find You’s heady will-they-won’t-they scenes that deftly capture two overachievers’ struggles with vulnerability.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Author-illustrator duo Mrs. & Mr. MacLeod kicked off The Grunions series with their wild and whimsical How to Eat a Book. The series continues with the delightfully riotous The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before.

Twins Gerald and Geraldine and their cousin Sheila live in a grand mansion with many, many doors, all artfully rendered in heavy black pen-and-ink with bold splashes of primary colors. Layered paper cutouts create a 3D effect, and shadows bolster the visual drama so that the story pulses with manic energy. After all, there’s so much to explore when it comes to doors, from the swinging double kitchen doors to a trapdoor in the floor. But to the Grunion cousins’ immense frustration, there is one door in the house that just won’t open. Why is it locked, the kids wonder? And what’s on the other side of it?

The trio aren’t shy about expressing their big feelings about the situation, whether through shouts or leaps or open-mouthed indignation. Sheila “studied the splinters and notches, / the nails and latches” while Gerald, who “closed every door he ever found,” secretly decides to protect the huge red door from the boisterous Geraldine, who “shook as she stomped and wriggled around . . . She screamed at the door and fell to the ground.”

A wild scuffle with a hammer results in a big crack in the door—through which a flowering vine emerges and grows at an alarming pace. What will happen when it fills the house and there’s no more room inside for the Grunions? The story’s brisk pace and rhythmic phrasing ramp up the fun suspense as the kids try to escape the vines, with the mysterious door their only possible way out.

Readers will delight in The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before’s kinetic and expressive artwork that’s rife with clever details (keep an eye out for the kitten) and high-impact type treatments. They’ll have lots to think and talk about when they encounter the book’s final pages, which reveal what’s beyond the mysterious door and will surely build anticipation for the next rollicking Grunions adventure.

—Linda M. Castellitto

Readers will delight in the The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before’s kinetic and expressive artwork that’s rife with clever details (keep an eye out for the kitten).
NonfictionFamily & Relationships

The Other Significant Others

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

If you’ve ever watched TV shows like “The Golden Girls” and “Kate & Allie” or considered super-close friend-duos like J.D. and Turk or Abbi and Ilana and thought, “What a great way to live!” then The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life With Friendship at the Center is for you. Like her pop-culture compatriots before her, debut author Rhaina Cohen understands the preciousness of a deep and abiding platonic relationship—no romance necessary.

That’s not to say Cohen is anti-romance: The NPR producer and editor is a happily married proponent of wedded bliss. But when it comes to relationships, she’s not in support of treasuring only wedded bliss. Instead, she urges readers to cultivate and celebrate “devoted, life-defining friendships.”

Cohen’s fervor for the topic was ignited by her own life-altering bond with a woman named M, who “stretched my understanding of the role a friendship could play in my life” and “made the world pulse with more possibilities for intimacy and support than before, and I wanted others to feel those possibilities for themselves.”

Over years of research, Cohen conducted 70 in-depth interviews with proponents of platonic life partnerships. And in eight chapters written with empathy, curiosity and a clear knack for storytelling, she shares the fascinating and heartwarming tales of several of those duos. They vary by gender, age, religion and sexuality but share a willingness to defy convention. Readers will meet youth pastors Nick and Art, whose platonic life partnership has confounded potential romantic partners; Inez and Barb, coworkers who became helpmeets in retirement; Lynda and Natasha, who went from colleagues to coparents; and more.

Cohen notes that due to societal factors including increased housing costs, decreased birth rates, evolving views on marriage and a growing willingness to home-share later in life, non-marital partnerships are more common, while not yet commonplace. The Other Significant Others offers readers an insightful and intimate look at what life could be like if we broaden our horizons beyond “compulsory coupledom” and welcome the idea that “romantic relationships are not the only unions that can shape our lives.”

Rhaina Cohen’s The Other Significant Others offers an insightful, intimate look at how deep, abiding platonic relationships shape our lives—no romance necessary.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

A Place for Vanishing

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Ann Fraistat’s deliciously creepy, highly inventive YA gothic horror novel A Place for Vanishing has a killer first line: “Days like this made me wish I’d never come back from the dead.” It just gets better from there—at least for readers who revel in cleverly conceived supernatural horror, from scary seances to oodles of sinister, clickety-clackety insects. For 16-year-old Libby Feldman, 13-year-old Vivi and their mom, not so much.

It was certainly a relief that their mom’s childhood home, Madame Clery’s House of Masks—a grand Victorian replete with blue roses and a hedge maze in the backyard—was vacant and available to give the family a fresh start after Libby’s recent suicide attempt. Libby has since been diagnosed with bipolar III disorder and is benefiting from medication and therapy, but newly delicate family dynamics have her on edge, and she’s baffled over why her mom thought moving into a haunted house was a good idea.

Founded in 1894, the House of Masks has been linked to numerous disappearances over the decades, and Libby’s grandparents died there. It’s filled with disturbing sounds and bizarre details, like beautiful but deeply unsettling stained glass windows depicting various insects—ants, moths, cicadas, wasps and more—surrounding human-like figures with voids for eyes.

Despite her doubts, Libby’s determined to ignore the you-should-flee signals her gut is sending, since, “I’d caused a lot of misery lately. I owed it to Mom and Vivi to make them feel good.” But urgent questions soon arise: Why is her mom behaving oddly and drinking cup after cup of blue-rose tea? Are the masks dangling from the windows as weird as she thinks they are, and why is Vivi so casual about wearing one? Handsome neighbor Flynn knows a lot about the house but is reluctant to share details. What is he—and the house—hiding?

As in her Bram Stoker Award-nominated debut novel, What We Harvest, Fraistat does a masterful job of balancing supernatural goings-on, psychological suspense and complicated relationships. She writes about the effects of trauma with sensitivity and care in this eminently entertaining horror tale rife with thrills, chills and heart.

Ann Fraistat writes about the effects of trauma with sensitivity and care in this eminently entertaining horror tale rife with thrills, chills and heart.
NonfictionHistoryEuropean History

Divine Might

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Comedy and classicism might seem an unusual pairing, but Natalie Haynes has parlayed her two areas of expertise into a career as a bestselling author of fiction and nonfiction, respected scholar and journalist, and popular podcaster (the BBC’s “Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics”).

Her new book, Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth, is a fascinating follow-up to last year’s history of mythological women, Pandora’s Jar. Here, she revisits Greek mythology with an eye to interrogating and reconsidering the stories we’ve long been told—and the roles to which goddesses have been relegated—from a feminist perspective.

Haynes’ passion for her subject is evident whether she’s conveying the results of rigorous research into the works of Homer, Ovid, Sophocles and Aeschylus; explaining how modern pop culture reflects common interpretations of Greek mythology; or describing in vivid detail her experiences of wondrous works of art both ancient and modern (poems, plays, sculptures, paintings, films, music videos and more).

Divine Might begins with the Muses and ends with the Furies; in between are chapters about Hera, Aphrodite, Artemis, Demeter, Hestia and Athena. All have been underestimated, whether in terms of their strength and wisdom, or their vengefulness and anger. As Haynes notes, “We like to be able to separate heroes, villains and victims. It’s convenient for a simple narrative, but it isn’t always reflective of the truth.”

For example, Hestia is not as well known as her counterparts, but as goddess of the hearth she “must have been constantly referred to in daily life, even if not in grand mythological narratives.” And while Artemis is portrayed as “a woodland goddess, riding through mountainous forests with her entourage of wild creatures” we mustn’t forget she revels in “absolute lawlessness, her insistence that everyone subscribes to her view of the world or pays the price.”

With intellectual rigor and contagious enthusiasm, Haynes urges readers to take a second look at contemporary art and society with a new, enlightened appreciation for these mythical women. After all, she writes, “When women make art like men do, their goddesses look divine.”

With intellectual rigor and contagious enthusiasm, Natalie Haynes urges readers to take a more enlightened look at Greek goddesses.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Grandma’s Roof Garden

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

When Granny goes to the market, people give her sidelong glances. After all, they’re selecting pristine produce from carefully curated displays while Granny is scooping up lumpy fruit and bumpy vegetables spilling out from an overflowing dumpster.

But the charming and resourceful star of Tang Wei’s debut picture book, Grandma’s Roof Garden, doesn’t mind the funny looks because she knows something important: This imperfect produce helps her feed her animals and compost her garden, a lush and colorful oasis she’s created atop a tall gray apartment building in the city of Chengdu, in southwest China. 

Clucking hens and honking geese, an inquisitive black cat and an impressive array of plants share space in Granny’s rooftop garden. Translator Kelly Zhang maintains the playful punchiness of Wei’s couplets and quatrains in the translation from Chinese to English: “Over each and every one, / Granny proudly cries with a grin: / Look at my gorgeous, / chubby veggie children!” 

Not only does Granny commune with nature and get lots of exercise every day, she creates community by sharing her bounty with her neighbors. Even better, she cooks the remaining produce for her family “to make them healthy, strong, and happy.” Wei’s expressive colored pencil drawings perfectly capture the neighbors’ surprise and delight, as well as the warm affection exuded by Granny’s family as they dine together on a host of delicious veggie dishes. A cheery mix of patterns, colors and textures brings visual interest and vibrancy to every page, from a spread overrun with dramatically curving vines to a set piece depicting an action-packed afternoon during which the cat supervises as Granny climbs a ladder, lays brick and tills a patch of dirt. Phew!

In her author’s note, Wei shares that Grandma’s Roof Garden was inspired by a beloved family member who has created her own marvelous roof garden. Readers will be touched to learn there’s a real-life Granny out there living a wonderful veggie-centric life—and perhaps be energized to grow community and good health in their very own gardens too. This heartwarming tale is one to share and treasure.

Tang Wei’s heartwarming tale, punctuated by expressive colored pencil drawings, will energize readers to grow community and good health in their very own gardens too.

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