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NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

The Barn

Review by Harvey Freedenberg

The savage murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till at the hands of a group of white men outside the small town of Drew, Mississippi, on August 28, 1955, stained the nation and galvanized the Civil Rights movement. In The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi, noted sports journalist and Mississippi native Wright Thompson brilliantly recounts the story of that lynching, while deeply exploring the history and culture of the Mississippi Delta out of whose soil it emerged.

Wright made an estimated 100 visits to the barn where Till died, a site whose location has long been shrouded in mystery. To recount the terror of Till’s final night, when he was kidnapped, tortured and shot for supposedly whistling at a white woman (a report disputed by many), Wright relies on the vivid memories of Till’s cousin Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., who accompanied Till on the fateful trip south from Chicago and was fortunate the killers did not take his life as well.

Midway through The Barn, Thompson detours from Till’s story to excavate the vivid history of the Delta’s “gumbo mud,” which includes the birth of blues music in the person of Charley Patton on a plantation some 10 miles from the barn and the activities of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Wright painstakingly traces the rise and fall of a hardscrabble agricultural economy, which produced both men like Till’s uncle Moses Wright, a sharecropper whose home the teenager was visiting at the time of his murder, and J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, the two people tried (and acquitted) for Till’s murder.

Thompson was raised in Clarksdale, Mississippi, near the farm Wright’s mother’s family first owned in 1913 and that it maintains to this day, and by parents who taught him to reject the bigotry that infected his home state. And so, he is acutely sensitive to his own ambivalence about what it means to be a Mississippian. “We spend so much time in the past here and yet so little time learning the history of who we are and how we got here,” he writes. The Barn is Thompson’s brave, forthright effort to begin the process of eradicating some of that ignorance.

Wright Thompson reckons with the culture of the Mississippi Delta and the murder of Emmett Till in his brilliant, probing history, The Barn.
FictionShort StoriesSatireLiterary Fiction

Rejection

Review by Thane Tierney

Rejection: Somewhere on the continuum between a casual date rebuff and a duo-destroying divorce, we’ve all experienced it. In Rejection, Whiting and O. Henry Award-winning author Tony Tulathimutte raises the experience to an art form. In seven connected stories, he chronicles several characters’ vivid responses to being turned down, or turned away. 

By vivid, I mean frequently TMI-delivering. Colorful descriptions of body parts and the multiple ways they can interact tumble off the page, and if depictions of sadism and ersatz semen (complete with a recipe) are off-putting, you might consider something more PG. On the other hand, if you can roll with the aforementioned, the book is frequently downright hilarious. 

In one story, the protagonist is a cartoonishly hyperactive tech bro, whose latest invention is living room furniture that also functions as workout equipment, allowing the user to crush out 300-pound leg presses. (Unfortunately, his team hasn’t yet worked out the “stinky/soggy upholstery” problem.) In another chapter, Tulathimutte documents a multi-hour consensus meeting in a university’s “queer-friendly vegetarian-friendly 420-friendly co-op,” weaponizing and satirizing political correctness in extremis. 

As one might expect from a graduate of both Stanford and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Tulathimutte has a facility with verbal stunt-piloting that at times borders on the dazzling. Not every writer can pull off a sentence like this one, describing social media as “the give-and-take of giving takes where no one could take what they’d give.” The structure of Rejection is distinctive as well, riddled with group text messages, acronyms and the jargon of those raised with the internet. Pro tip; Boomers and Gen Xers might want to keep a browser tab open to Urban Dictionary for easy reference.  

Right at the end, Tulathimutte throws one last curveball reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges, a little literary Ouroboros that may cause the reader to question the legitimacy of the entire narrative that precedes it. Clever trick, that, in a clever book aimed at clever readers. 

Tony Tulathimutte’s facility with verbal stunt-piloting borders on the dazzling in Rejection, a novel in seven stories that chronicles vivid responses to the experience of being turned down, or turned away.
Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy RomanceFantasy

Sorcery and Small Magics

Review by Dolly R. Sickles

Debut author Maiga Doocy weaves a charming, captivating tale with Sorcery and Small Magics, the first installment of her Wildersongs Trilogy.

Leovander Loveage is a successful sorcerer, but only when it comes to minor charms; he keeps the stakes low and colors inside the lines. His lesser spells may not ever win his father’s respect, but his lighthearted enchantments make people happy, and he’s accepted that powerful magic never works out for him. His nemesis, Sebastian Grimm, is his opposite. Grimm’s approach to magic is confident, strong—and gets on Leo’s nerves.

Leo and Grimm are students at the Fount, where Leo is a scriver, or writer of spells, and Grimm is a caster. They get into trouble when Grimm accidentally casts an illegal spell that binds Leo to obey his commands. It’s a power imbalance that is refreshingly never abused: Rather, it compels these two young sorcerers to work together to find a counterspell before anyone finds out what happened. They’ll have to employ the help of a powerful sorcerer who supposedly lives deep in the Unquiet Wood, a forest full of monsters and other dark things. As they embark on a quest together, it becomes clear that this grumpy-sunshine pairing just needed the right opportunity to find their way to happiness.

Doocy makes the academic pursuit of magic seem so normal and tactile that the reader feels they might open their own desk drawer and find quills and paper and ink. Matching the light tone of Leo’s witty narration, the stakes of using forbidden magic aren’t high beyond the personal fallout for him and Grimm: The world won’t end, the walls around the Fount won’t crumble, nobody’s going to die—but they will get cast out of school. Leo and Grimm are realistically flawed, lovingly hopeful characters, both of whom discover that they have more inner strength than they ever suspected. The two men have “never been anything but too much for each other,” but by the end of Sorcery and Small Magics, “too much” is just enough.

A sorcerer’s rival accidentally casts an obedience spell on him in Maiga Doocy’s witty and refreshing Sorcery and Small Magics.
FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

Pearly Everlasting

Review by Carolyn Cates

In 1903, a wildlife photographer ventured into a remote Maine lumber camp to capture the image of a woman nursing an orphaned bear cub alongside her newborn daughter. This true story inspired Tammy Armstrong’s debut novel, Pearly Everlasting, which imagines the life of that girl and that bear, suckled at the same breast and raised as brother and sister in a cabin set deep in the pines.

Pearly Everlasting’s mother is a healer, and her father is a cook in a logging camp in the woods of New Brunswick. Her father finds an orphaned bear cub during “false spring,” brings it home, and raises “Bruno” as the newborn Pearly’s brother. It’s hard to say whether Pearly is part bear, or Bruno is part human; either way, they share a powerful connection. Girl and bear ramble through the forest on endless adventures. But when the camp gets a cruel new supervisor, Heeley Swicker, their innocent life is forced to change. Swicker turns up dead, and Bruno is blamed and sold by Swicker’s nephew to animal traders. Enlisting the help of her friends Songcatcher and Ebony, Pearly sets out on a quest to the “Outside” to rescue him. Afterwards, she and Bruno must find their way homeward alone through ice and snow, meeting good people, bad people and one cranky and dangerous wild bear along the way.

Told in a lyrical voice (it’s no surprise to learn that Armstrong is a poet), Pearly Everlasting is at times hauntingly beautiful, at times sad, yet also laugh-out-loud funny in other moments. There’s a dose of fairy-tale magic in the woodland setting: Old Jack, a spirit from the loggers’ stories, is always lurking in the shadows and threatening Pearly’s world. 

This tender tale of hope and the redeeming nature of human kindness is also about coming home, literally and figuratively. At the end of her journey, Pearly remembers all of those who helped her along her way, and writes to them: “I tell them how the trees have grown so big up here on Greenlaw Mountain the spring light lives inside their boughs and rarely comes out to warm our yard. But by summer, the light climbs down and spills itself wide—a carpet Bruno naps in longer each day. This is how we take our days. This is how we make them stay.”

Told in a poetic voice, Tammy Armstrong’s debut novel, Pearly Everlasting, imagines the life of a girl and a bear raised as brother and sister in a cabin set deep in the pines.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Read at Your Own Risk

Review by Alice Cary

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.
Science Fiction & FantasyHorror

Model Home

Review by Laura Hubbard

Ezri Maxwell doesn’t know whether their childhood home had ghosts, exactly, but they do know that it was haunted: determined to maim, traumatize and scare them and their Black family into leaving their mostly-white Dallas suburb. Desperate to distance themselves from a childhood of constant dread, Ezri and their sisters fled the former model home as soon as they were old enough. Their parents, however, stayed where they were—right until the day they died under mysterious circumstances. In the aftermath of the apparent murder-suicide, the remaining Maxwells must reckon with not only their parents’ deaths, but also their relationships with one another and their past experiences. All the while, they must wrestle with a singular question: Were their parents’ deaths as they seemed, or did they die at the hands of the spirit the three siblings all tacitly agree haunted their childhood from the moment they moved in?

How Rivers Solomon built their terrifying new take on the haunted house.

To call Model Home a haunted house novel is like saying that It is about a clown. Yes, you would technically be correct, but you’d be missing the point. At its core, Rivers Solomon’s latest novel is a study of the interior landscape of someone trying to make sense of their life in the wake of extreme tragedy. Ezri’s head is cluttered with the detritus of trauma, from their mother’s ambivalence toward them as a child to the repercussions of living with mental health issues for years, (“a host of diagnoses—which change with whatever clinician I see”). That emotional clutter often makes Ezri an unconventional narrator, and occasionally it makes them an unreliable one. It also explores how Ezri’s struggles to learn to be a parent mirror their mother’s obvious reluctance to move from academic to full-time mother. Add that to the long-reaching malice of the house itself, and Model Home makes the point that the past doesn’t just inform the present: It haunts it. A disturbing tale that explores self-doubt, family drama and childhood trauma, Model Home is a powerful and gut-wrenching addition to the haunted house pantheon.

Rivers Solomon’s Model Home is a powerful and gut-wrenching addition to the haunted house pantheon.
NonfictionHistoryCultural History

Paper of Wreckage

Review by Stephen Elliott

The oral history form can sometimes feel like a cop-out—a notebook dump that requires the author to do little but interview and transcribe and put passages in a reasonable order. 

But Paper of Wreckage: The Rogues, Renegades, Wiseguys, Wankers, and Relentless Reporters Who Redefined American Media gets a pass. The book’s subject, the New York Post’s past 50 years, includes so many famous and infamous characters, world events and weird historical side quests that the oral history form makes perfect sense. Plus, most of the subjects interviewed are colorful storytellers in their own right, making the blocks of text propulsive and vibrant without authorial intervention. 

This could be a book about journalism, sports journalism, political journalism, gossip journalism, celebrity, serial killers, labor, New York City, Donald Trump or Rupert Murdoch. Instead, it’s all of the above. Authors Susan Mulcahy and Frank DiGiacomo, both Post veterans themselves, have a sense for narrative (or at times, comedic) timing. Some well-known figure is described negatively and then immediately shows up to defend themself (or admit wrongdoing). An interviewee describes a funny or bad experience with a Post co-worker, only for the co-worker to respond directly in the next paragraph. Even journalists remember things differently. 

Two ex-Posties compare Murdoch’s arrival at the tabloid in the 1970s to Hitler’s arrival in Poland. But for the most part, the crew at the newspaper didn’t take themselves too seriously. Some went on to illustrious stints at more respectable publications, but still recall their time at the Post as the most fun and memorable of their careers. It was a funnier, dirtier, meaner, more violent and more exciting newsroom than most—including the New York Daily News and New York Times, with whom the Post has traded scoops and staffers back and forth for generations. 

The story sobers as it nears the present day. The paper’s right-wing politics become more entrenched, and the embrace of longtime Page Six stalwart Donald Trump and his presidency sour even those who still held out hope for the paper. The publication whiffs on the transition to television and then the internet, and its sway in New York faded. But the ride up to that point will entertain anyone interested in media, politics, celebrity or good stories. 

Paper of Wreckage is a vibrant oral history of the New York Post that recounts the tabloid’s sordid—and legendary—glory days.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Mama’s Magnificent Dancing Plantitas

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

School’s out and Jesus is itching to run outside and play, but wait—Mama has to watch her telenovela first. “When you’re an only child, with no brothers or sisters to play with,” he remarks, “you have to make your own fun.” To pass the time, he sweeps, dusts and eats “all the cereal we’re running low on. That way, we can start on the new box!”

When a stunned Mama encounters the chaos wrought by Jesus’ helpfulness, she conjures up an idea to keep him entertained so she can enjoy her afternoon TV: “What I really need is someone to look after my dear plantitas. . . . Someone who will be a big brother to these magnificent plants.” 

In 2023’s Papa’s Magical Water-Jug Clock, which received a Pura Belpré Honor for both writing and illustration, readers learned that Jesus is a sweet, spirited little boy who takes pride in helping his family. First, he assisted Papa with outdoor landscaping; now, in Mama’s Magnificent Dancing Plantitas, he’s excitedly dubbed himself indoor “Chief Plant Officer!”

Jesus takes his job seriously, and as he waters and chats with the greenery in his charge, he also shares his takes on them, including a “grumpy” sunglasses-wearing cactus and a Swiss cheese plant with holey leaves: “By the way, don’t eat them,” he warns. “They definitely don’t taste like cheese!”

When his attempt to cheer up a droopy golden pothos via impromptu dance party goes terribly awry, Jesus’ anxiety is hilariously illustrated by Eliza Kinkz in double-page spreads of soaring despair. He ponders his fate as a “murderer” and envisions a somber yet delightfully punny plant funeral. What will his parents think? Does Mama’s favorite plant have a chance at survival? 

Stand-up comedian and TV writer Jesus Trejo has created another warmly funny story that highlights the value of improvisational thinking, the beauty of a loving family and the joys of houseplants. Kinkz’s kinetic, colorful illustrations serve as a wonderful counterpoint to this winning treasure of a tale that reminds us that “breaking things is part of life. Sometimes, it’s even what helps us grow.”

 

With Mama's Magnificent Dancing Plantitas, Jesus Trejo and Eliza Kinkz have created another warmly funny story that highlights the value of improvisational thinking, the beauty of a loving family and the joys of houseplants.
NonfictionSelf-Help

Meditations for Mortals

Review by Amy Scribner

It’s time to let go of the idea that there is another checklist, another productivity hack, that will lead us to a nirvana where we can finally relax. If you feel like you need permission for this, British journalist and time management guru Oliver Burkeman outlines an exit from the hamster wheel in Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts. 

“We set out to make mincemeat of our inboxes,” he writes, “defeat our to-read piles, or impose order on our schedules; we try to optimize our levels of fitness or focus, and feel obliged to be always enhancing our parenting skills, competence in personal finance, or understanding of world events.” He flies in the face of generations of self-help books, arguing with kindness and empathy that there is no magic wand to complete every task and attain total control. In fact, we don’t need to “do it all” . . . at all.

For example, Burkeman embraces what he calls “scruffy hospitality”: There’s no need to wait until your house is sparkling clean and you have mastered a gourmet menu to invite people over. Just pick up the major piles of stuff, make spaghetti and feed your friends! In a chapter titled “Too Much Information,” Burkeman writes that we will never be able to consume all the books and all the magazines and all the podcasts, even at double speed. Instead, “treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket.” Choose a few books as they flow past you, and let the rest go with the current.

Meditations for Mortals is a generous book chock-full of hard-earned advice from someone who has felt the same pressures we all have, but has thought about it more deeply than most. Burkeman suggests that we treat his book’s chapters as daily meditations, reading one per day, and that is likely a satisfying course of action. But his compelling set of mini-lessons may have readers swiftly sprinting through. Burkeman will likely forgive us the imperfection.

Oliver Burkeman flies in the face of generations of self-help books, inviting readers to let go of their desire for control and get off the hamster wheel of endless to-do lists and TBR stacks.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

John the Skeleton

Review by Alice Cary

 

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.
RomanceParanormal Romance

Lightning in Her Hands

Review by Katie Garaby

In Lightning in Her Hands, Raquel Vasquez Gilliland returns to the small town of Cranberry, Virginia, and the fascinating Flores women she introduced in Witch of Wild Things. This time, Gilliland focuses on the mercurial Teal Flores as she embarks on a friends-to-lovers romance.

Teal has a magical gift, as all the Flores women do: She can alter the weather depending on her mood. But ever since her mother pinched a piece of her gift as a child before skipping town, Teal’s power has been unpredictable and uncontrollable. To fix her gift, she’ll probably have to find her long-lost mother, who unfortunately has a magical knack for hiding. A more pressing problem is that Teal doesn’t have a date to her ex’s wedding, but there’s an obvious, very hot solution for that: her longtime best friend, Carter Vasquez. If only Carter hadn’t decided a year ago, after a steamy, one-time-only make-out session, that he was done pining after Teal. They haven’t spoken since, but what does Teal have to lose in asking?

As it turns out, Carter needs Teal, too. To gain his inheritance from his recently deceased grandmother, he has to find a wife. So the two strike a bargain: They’ll pretend to get married, with Carter taking Teal to her ex’s wedding and giving her a cut of his inheritance. But what starts as a mutually beneficial arrangement quickly turns into a love that can withstand any storm.

Building on a rich history of magical realism, Gilliland has crafted a family of strong but wounded women whose stories we crave and whose happiness we root for. The Flores sisters are a captivating trio, each with their own unique talents. While Teal is the main focus of this book, Sage (the heroine of Witch of Wild Things) and Sky are an integral part of her story. Lightning in Her Hands builds beautifully upon Witch of Wild Things, highlighting the importance of family and the strength of sisterly love, and will leave readers looking forward to Sky’s turn at the helm. But before we get there, we can savor this perfectly executed friends-to-lovers romance. Carter is an excellent foil for Teal: steady and even-keeled, someone who has always seen her worth. The love and attraction they have for each other is palpable, and we know it’s only a matter of time before they realize it, too.

Lush and beautifully written, Lightning in Her Hands is a gorgeous novel full of heart, magic and family.

Read our review of the audiobook of Lightning in Her Hands.

Lightning in Her Hands is a gorgeous friends-to-lovers romance that builds beautifully upon author Raquel Vasquez Gilliland’s debut, Witch of Wild Things.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Intermezzo

Review by Lauren Bufferd

Intermezzo, Sally Rooney’s much-anticipated fourth novel, tells a story of loss and grieving as two brothers reckon with the death of their father in ways that threaten to fragment their already troubled relationship. 

Peter Koubek is a socially and professionally competent lawyer living in Dublin in his early 30s. Beneath his polished exterior, he is bereft after his father’s death, suicidal and self-medicating with liquor and pills. His brother Ivan, younger by 10 years and once a chess prodigy, is now a loner struggling to maintain his early promise. At a regional chess match, Ivan falls for 36-year-old Margaret, who manages the local art center, and they begin a passionate romance despite their age difference. When Ivan confides in his older brother, Peter’s response is rude and dismissive. He is ashamed to confess to Ivan that his own love life is complicated. Peter is involved with two women: Naomi, a college student and part-time sex worker, and Sylvia, his first love, who suffered a disabling accident that led to their breakup years before. Peter and Ivan have long been locked into a cycle of judgment and disapproval. Now, their exchange crosses a line that it seems neither can come back from. 

As is typical in a Rooney novel, most of the traumas that shaped her characters—the father’s death, Margaret’s difficult separation from her heavily drinking ex-husband, Sylvia’s accident—happened prior to the events of the story. Rooney’s focus is instead on the various ways her characters are trapped inside their pain and if they are even going to emerge emotionally intact, and she brings skills she has honed on dissecting romantic relationships to the brothers’ bond with powerful results. Rooney underscores Peter and Ivan’s differences by changing her style when the focus shifts between them: Ivan’s chapters are told in a conventional third person, while Peter’s are narrated in a dreamy, stylized stream of consciousness that echoes Rooney’s countryman James Joyce. A tight focus on the siblings allows Rooney to delve into ideas about birth order and masculinity, while the careful balance between the novel’s brisk pace and its quite fearless exploration of sexual desire makes Intermezzo Rooney’s most ambitious novel yet. 

The careful balance between Intermezzo’s brisk pace and its quite fearless exploration of sexual desire makes Sally Rooney’s fourth novel her most ambitious yet.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Into the Goblin Market

Review by Alice Cary

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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