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EDITOR’S NOTE CHILDREN’S
CHILDREN’S | Summer Edward
Into the Unknown
One of the things adults find puzzling about young people, not to mention maddening, is their legendary unwillingness to furnish a definite answer. “I don’t know,” reinforced by a blank stare and punctuated with a noncommittal shrug, is a common conversational defense of the young person being questioned. It’s not surprising then that as adults, we often see children as the fuzzy set, the fence-sitters, the willful wafflers, and we balk at the specter of such childlike incertitude.
I recently joined the Kirkus team as a young readers’ editor, and someone asked me what I thought I could accomplish during my tenure. Hewing to the unspoken rules of adulthood, I fashioned a surefire response, one grounded in my knowledge of publishing trends and children’s book diversity statistics and in the standpoints that drive my work. I omitted what I’ll deign to mention now: my acquired wariness of trends; my nagging concern that an overly data-minded publishing industry could too easily become data-blinded; and the ambivalence I sometimes feel that is a normal part of being human. After all, to admit uncertainty, or even ignorance, can be hazardous given the rock-ribbed, needto-know basis of many an adult conversation.
Young people want a different kind of conversation, one less concerned about knowing and more attuned to fostering connection. Books for young readers must illuminate the big questions of modern life, and no children’s book can ever be innocent of ideological freight. However, we who are “minders of make-believe”—Leonard Marcus’ phrase for the idealists and entrepreneurs shaping children’s literature—must always remember that for young readers, connection trumps conclusions. “I don’t know,” that de facto mantra of young people that resists rigid overcommitment to beliefs and identifications, should also be our humble, courageous stance as we empower them to have the types of conversations they want to have. To read is to be in conversation with books, and the great conversation of literature should first and foremost satisfy young people’s need for human connection.
Our current historical moment is one marked by a fierce and atomizing battle of ideologies, not all of them harmless. Perhaps the most dangerous of all is the ideology of certainty. In recent years, children all over the world glommed on to “Let It Go” and “Into the Unknown,” the marquee ballads from Disney’s Frozen and Frozen 2, animated films inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s 19th-century fairy tale “The Snow Queen.” The unparalleled fervor with which children ceaselessly sang and resang the lyrics of the songs (driving many adults bonkers in the process) evinces not just the power of the euphoric, propulsive musical scores, but young people’s timeless allegiance to the freedom and wisdom of the unknown. Like the Frozen songs, children’s books can be for readers of all ages a bulwark against the fanatical certainty of an increasingly algorithmic culture.
Speaking of bulwarks, one of the boons of joining Kirkus is the incredible opportunity to work with so many people who love children’s books and regard them with both conviction and curiosity. Outgoing young readers’ editor Vicky Smith, who has left to return to the library world, has been a dynamic apostle for literary culture, a champion for diversity, and a den mother for young readers. Over the past 13 years, her searching editorial columns and energetic conversations with authors and illustrators have helped lift the world of children’s literature to a higher sphere. To take up the torch she carried is one of the greatest honors of my career.
The question that now remains is, to where shall I bear the proverbial torch? Well, into the unknown, of course.
Illustration by Lucie de Moyencourt from What the Road Said by Cleo Wade (Feiwel & Friends, 2021)
Summer Edward is a young readers’ editor.
the lock-eater
her best-friend triangle of Morgan-Keilani-Hrishi. In addition to stealing Keilani’s attention, Mackelle is trying to convince Morgan that Hrishi has a crush on her. The story unfurls slowly at first, with the timeline alternating between chapters labeled “Before” and “After.” It gains momentum quickly, though, as Morgan makes a questionable choice and finds herself in over her head. Morgan’s internal conversations with Almost-Mom ring true at times but sometimes feel forced. The depictions of grief and anxiety, however, are authentic and relatable, and the author’s own experiences lend credence to both. Morgan reads as White; Hrishi and Keilani are Indian and Hawaiian respectively.
This heartfelt debut starts slowly but finishes strong.
(Fiction. 8-12)
THE LOCK-EATER
Clark, Zack Loran Dial Books (368 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 18, 2022 978-1-984816-88-7
An orphan is—quelle surprise—an extremely special magical girl with a mysterious past. Melanie thinks she’s being escorted from the Merrytrails Orphanage for Girls by gearling Traveler, a clockwork magical construct, in order to become a witch’s apprentice. But as he explains to her once they’ve left the city, that story was a bit of a fib. Traveler, who awoke in a destroyed laboratory with no memory of his own life, needs a human chaperone in order to remain under the radar, as a “thaumaturgically animated clockwork retainer” is not supposed to be a thinking person. Melanie, excited to disguise herself as the “stupendous magical prodigy Lady Porta the Periwinkle,” agrees to the plan. It’s a thrill to learn magic, to enchant her cloak into a donkey, and to get a gorgeous new wizard’s outfit from a crushworthy girl tailor. But an imperial aldermage hijacks Melanie into his own nefarious journey. (On top of having clearly villainous ends, the aldermage continually harasses her for wearing a boy’s coat instead of “gender-appropriate clothing,” though many others praise Melanie’s fashion.) Although the orphanage girls, including Melanie’s best friend who has light brown skin, are racially diverse, Melanie and almost all nonorphan humans seem to be White.
A charming entry in the magical foundling genre that satis-
fies without standing out. (Fantasy. 9-13)
SNOW STRUCK
Courage, Nick Delacorte (336 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 25, 2022 978-0-593-30349-8
Three kids endure a historic snowstorm. Elizabeth and Matty are visiting their cousin, Ashley, in New York City for Christmas, but it doesn’t feel like the holiday season. An unseasonable heat wave quickly transforms into a choking blizzard, and their vacation goes from uncomfortably hot to dangerously cold. As the family struggles to walk from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Union Square, interstitial chapters follow Joy, a scientist at the National Climatic Research Center, and a variety of animals portrayed with anthropomorphic consciousness. It is important to depict the realities and possibilities of climate change for young readers given that they will have to cope with a dangerously changing world, and this story skillfully provides a manageable, survivable view of factually terrifying possibilities. However, despite the globally high stakes, keeping the focus exclusively on this one small, privileged, default White family means that the last third of the book that devotes a great deal of attention to their escaped Pomeranian, Fang, becomes less interesting than the setting itself and the question it raises about other human New Yorkers surviving the storm. A necessarily hopeful ending and author’s note keep this from turning existentially grim, an important note to avoid striking in middle-grade.
Important, adventurous, but still a slog, like trudging
through a climate change–related blizzard. (Fiction. 9-13)
THE CASE OF THE SMUGGLER’S CURSE
Dawson, Mark Illus. by Ben Mantle Welbeck Flame (256 pp.) $8.95 paper | Jan. 25, 2022 978-1-80130-010-0 Series: The After School Detective Club, 1
A group of friends joins forces to investigate a crew of suspicious seafaring adults.
When new friends Max Green, Lucy Yeung, Joe Carter, and Charlotte Wells (who prefers to go by Charlie) spot a strange man standing on the sea wall in their quiet English seaside town of Southwold, they suspect something sinister is up. When Charlie’s little dog, Sherlock, charges at the man, his ragefilled response results in both Sherlock and the children nearly drowning. This is just the beginning of the friends’ fraught interactions with a cast of over-the-top villains. However, readers are saved from experiencing much real suspense due to convenient, too-tidy circumstances and plot twists. The plot is entertaining, if predictable; adventure-loving readers will find
the developing friendships between the four children amusing and the mystery moderately exciting. Yet, even though the novel touches on the horrors of animal smuggling and sprinkles many scenes with humor, this light, fun read misses opportunities to dig deeper into its characters, themes, and storylines. Disappointingly, the author uses physical characteristics—such as beady eyes, crooked teeth, and wobbling jowls—in a stigmatizing way to negatively describe villains and unlikable characters. Lucy’s surname points to Chinese ancestry; Max appears on the cover with brown skin, but the text gives no indication of his race. Other characters seem to default to White. Illustrations not seen.
A jolly adventure story that skims the surface. (author’s
note, character profiles, map) (Mystery. 8-12)
SNEAKS
Egan, Catherine Knopf (336 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 18, 2022 978-0-593-30640-6
Sixth grader Ben Harp and two of his classmates must stop an alien invasion in their small town. Eleven-year-old Ben has had a miserable start to Livingston Middle School. He’s having trouble finding his footing socially since Ashok, his Bengali French Canadian best friend, is spending a year abroad in Paris. He also thinks he saw his teacher’s watch crawl across the floor. Things look even grimmer when the school librarian forces him to team up with two loner girls—newcomer Akemi Hanamura and unpopular Charlotte Moss—on a local history project. After interviewing Agatha Bent, the elderly subject they are assigned to, the trio starts to unearth the truth about the mysterious objects they keep seeing. They’re Sneaks—interdimensional aliens who feed on fear and pose as everyday objects or animals, and their presence signals that an even greater evil is intent on destroying Earth. There’s a fun vibe to the plot that channels Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Men in Black, and Stranger Things, but Egan relies too heavily on the tired inattentive-parents device for characterization. Ben’s inventor mom and professor dad are so immersed in work and each other that they leave him to watch over his 7-year-old brother, Leo, and Ben often feels neglected. The story positively explores Ben and Akemi’s growing friendship and the importance of being seen and appreciated, however. Ben and Charlotte read as White; Akemi’s name cues Japanese heritage.
An action-packed adventure that focuses on friendship
and teamwork. (Science fiction. 9-12)
THE WITCH’S APPRENTICE
Elliott, Zetta Illus. by Cherise Harris Random House (272 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 18, 2022 978-0-593-42770-5 Series: Dragons in a Bag, 3
Jaxon and company return in this follow-up to The Dragon Thief (2019). Jax is frustrated with Ma, the witch he’s apprenticed to. Instead of teaching him about magic, she’s teaching him about plants. Then, mysterious ash starts falling from the sky and the adults of New York City start falling asleep all over the place, just as Ma, Jax, and Ma’s coven leave Brooklyn for the annual convention in Chicago. Jax’s first-person narration chronicles his frustrations with Ma, which go beyond her unwillingness to teach him magic to a deeper theme: adults who don’t communicate thoroughly with children and don’t allow children agency. When a face from the past shows up and
