May 30 2025

Cousins In The Time Of Magic by Emma Otheguy

with delightful illustrations by Poly Bernatene.

Bear with me while I tell you an anecdote here. I used to work in some decently nice restaurants, and at one of them had a manager of Mexican descent who loathed Cinco de Mayo. According to him, it’s a holiday made up by American beer companies that no one in Mexico actually celebrates. And don’t even get him started on the conflation with Mexican Independence, lol.

So I admittedly came into this book — and what reads like the start of a fresh new middle grade series — with a bit of a weather eye for tone given that the original Cinco de Mayo plays a pivotal role in the plot. It was thus immensely gratifying to read Emma Otheguy’s note towards the end that this occasion has primarily been celebrated by Latines in the United States to commemorate the Mexican victory against the French. Why? Because it ensured that the Confederacy would not gain a crucial ally on its southern border during the American Civil War. There’s a whole bunch of other stuff involving the Monroe Doctrine, but the defeat of the French imperial forces at Pueblo ensured that democracy and liberty would continue to have a fighting chance in the Western Hemisphere.

Is that something I knew before reading this book? Heck no! Is it a darn good reason to celebrate? Absolutely! Does it one hundred percent explain the disparity in opinions regarding the day? Yes, and I’m super grateful that Ms Otheguy has gone to the trouble of explaining it all in a super accessible manner in this new portal fantasy novel for kids.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/05/30/cousins-in-the-time-of-magic-by-emma-otheguy/

May 29 2025

Allegro by Ariel Dorfman

Friends and readers, what a glorious thing it is to have music in the world! Whether you appreciate it for itself, or for the ways in which it can bring you closer to divinity — as Johann Sebastian Bach, among so many others, believed — music is a gift that connects the interior world ineffably with the external.

Writing about music, thus, has always been one of the most difficult literary tasks (and thank goodness we live in an era where any lapses in education and exposure can be remedied by looking up works on the Internet, for those of us with that not uncommon privilege.) Luckily for readers, Ariel Dorfman not only writes about the music of Bach and Handel and Mozart with both appreciation and passion, but also plunges us into the composers’ worlds, using a curious chapter where all three lives intersected in order to propel his story.

In 1765, nine year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has already achieved some renown as a performer and composer. While staying with Johann Christian Bach — the successful musician who was the son of the far more famous name, to modern ears — Mozart is importuned by a surgeon named Jack Taylor to intercede with Christian on a matter of reputation.

Years ago, Jack’s father, the famed ophthalmologist Chevalier Taylor, had operated on Sebastian’s failing eyes. Shortly afterwards, the older Bach died. Ever since, Christian has publicly blamed the chevalier for his father’s death.

Jack is determined to clear his father’s name. He insists that the departed George Handel holds the key, if only Christian will meet Jack and admit it. Christian has no intention of coming face to face with the son of his father’s killer, hence the desperate straits Jack has come to, begging a nine year-old for help. But Mozart is no ordinary nine year-old, and his insistence on seeing this mystery through will last over a decade, even as he seeks to find a place for himself and his music in the world.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/05/29/allegro-by-ariel-dorfman/

May 28 2025

Convert by John Arcudi & Savannah Finley

I can’t be the only person who picked up this title thinking that there’d be a religious subtext here. And perhaps there is, but the creators chose a much more interesting way to use the title word in this graphic novel, that collects the first (?) four books of the series.

Science Officer Orrin Kutela is a twofer on his space crew’s mission to an uncharted planet. As both an evolutionary biologist and an artist, he’s responsible for recording any images should the ship’s equipment fail. But it’s failure of an entirely unexpected kind that leaves him stranded planet-side, alone and with any help some thirty years away.

With k-rations running out, Orrin starts looking for sustenance. The local flora, while beautiful, doesn’t have enough nutrients to sustain a human being. The fauna proves difficult to hunt and trap. When Orrin finally manages to catch and cook a fish, his body rejects the meal entirely, treating it as poison.

Dying of starvation, Orrin writes what he thinks will be his last words in the journal he’s been diligently keeping since making landfall. But the planet and its inhabitants aren’t done with him yet, as he slowly begins a process of conversion that changes everything about him, body and, perhaps, soul.

There are strong Annihilation vibes in this tale of a man who must adapt to survive, and in so doing learn that sometimes survival is the greatest lie of all. Orrin’s adoption into the local ecology is both transcendent and nightmarish, as he learns not only how to assimilate but how to improve the lives of the sentient creatures he’s joined, even as the being known as The Provider uses him as a pawn. It’s thought-provoking and weird, even if I feel that it doesn’t go quite deep enough into the themes it’s attempting to explore.

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May 27 2025

Growing Home by Beth Ferry

with illustrations from the award-winning Terry and Eric Fan.

Oh my heart. I actually had to check my calendar to make sure that I wasn’t being particularly susceptible to this book due to hormones, and that I was in fact laughing and crying solely due to Growing Home’s charm, wit, and deeply understood and portrayed empathy.

Mr and Mrs Tupper live at 3 Ramshorn Drive with their daughter Jillian and a grumpy goldfish named Toasty. Toasty is mostly Mr Tupper’s pet, swimming around in his octagonal antique fishbowl — the Tuppers are antiquarians — and providing a sympathetic ear to his adult human’s musings and woes. Mrs Tupper doesn’t really go in for pets, so it’s a relief to her when Jillian proves to be more into plants than animals. Jillian adores her speckled ivy named, somewhat unimaginatively, Ivy. Toasty is a little miffed that he’s not the favorite, while Ivy basks in her position, as well as in the sunshine and cheer Jillian provides.

Their delicate balance is upset first by the arrival of a spider named Arthur, who’s surprised to find himself moved to Ramshorn Drive from the bookstore where he lived, then by Ollie, another plant rescued by Jillian. As their four distinct personalities rub along, they slowly become aware of their capabilities as a team… and of an unexpected threat that could ruin everything not only for themselves, but for the Tuppers as well. With the help of a little magic, will they be able to learn how to become real friends in order to save the day?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/05/27/growing-home-by-beth-ferry/

May 25 2025

Kassandra by Christa Wolf

Kassandra tells the tale of the fall of Troy in a first-person flashback narrated by Cassandra herself. At the time of the telling, she has been in Greek captivity and is on her way to her execution. Cassandra was the daughter of Priam, the king of Troy, and his wife Hecube. Long before this novel’s starting point, the god Apollo had given Cassandra the gift of prophecy, but because she the refused to give him sexual favors he cursed her that her prophecies would never be believed. Cassandra’s lengthy monologue — the book is not divided into chapters, nor are there any line breaks between gaps in the story — begins some years before the Trojan War and continues past the city’s fall.

Kassandra by Christa Wolf

Wolf also expects her readers to know the court of Troy as well as Cassandra, who has grown up in it. She gives a little bit of context about who is who, and eventually I was able to piece together most of the relationships, but I am sure that as a person who has only read one Iliad one time I missed things. I added a layer of difficulty for myself by reading Kassandra in German, so I had to make the leap across the different transliterations of Greek names that have become traditional in German and English. (As I note below, there is an English translation of Kassandra, and Wolf’s use of language is not so spectacular that it presents more than the usual challenges of translation.)

Crucially for readers like me, who only know the Trojan War through the Iliad, Cassandra tells of expeditions from Troy to reclaim the king’s sister from captivity in Sparta, where she had been taken after another war. Women have considerable agency in the ancient world that Wolf depicts, but it is also, in the end, sharply limited, and women are routinely treated as objects, prizes for male conquest, or as a means to hurt other men. After two failed expeditions to retrieve their king’s sister, the Trojans’ willingness to support taking an equally valuable prize — Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta — is more understandable. In Wolf’s telling, Paris breaks the customs of hospitality by insulting Menelaus when the latter is on a pilgrimage to Troy, and his subsequent abduction of Helen guarantees that the war will be unrelenting.

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May 23 2025

Tantalizing Tales — May 2025 — Part Three

Hello, readers! We’re doing a third roundup column of Most Anticipated Titles this May because there are so many good books still pouring in here at the end of the month and in the first weeks of June. Gosh, how is it almost June already? It feels like we were just slogging through the five years of January before suddenly fast-forwarding to the start of summer!

It’s perhaps a little ironic then that the first selection I have for you today is a book super high on my interest list, Caitlin Rozakis’ The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association (and not just because I had a lunchtime meeting today about my kids transitioning to middle school soon!) As a lifelong lover of the magical school trope, I was totally sold on reading about the subject from the perspective of an over-worked parent, now that I am one myself.

When Vivian’s six year-old daughter Aria is bitten by a werewolf, they’re plunged into the previously hidden world of paranormal education. Back-to-school shopping is always a little disorienting, but Vivian soon finds herself in the unexpected position of having to make sure Aria has things like just the right sacrificial dagger and chew toys to fit in.

Meanwhile, Vivian also has to navigate PTA politics, with sirens and chthonic nymphs and people who can literally set her hair on fire. The biggest challenge of all, however, might be dealing with a prophecy of doom that sounds suspiciously like it’s about Aria. Every parent thinks their kid is special but this is way more than Vivian ever anticipated.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/05/23/tantalizing-tales-may-2025-part-three/

May 22 2025

Evil Eyes Sea by Ozge Samanci

What a terrific murder mystery graphic novel! I read a lot of both, and know how difficult it can be to perfectly encapsulate a crime novel — and one that involves not only a murder but political intrigue, as well — into graphic format. Ozge Samanci has managed that in this compelling tale, that’s rightfully been sweeping up awards.

Set in 1990s Turkey, Ece and Meltem are mechanical engineering students at Bosphorus University. Meltem is smart and beautiful, and has the men flocking to her. Ece is shorter and bolder, and often runs interference for the more reticent Meltem. The two women are best friends and scuba diving enthusiasts, aided by Meltem’s boyfriend Omer, who supplies both gear and a psychological shield against a chauvinistic society that questions the presence of women in certain public spaces.

It’s while on a dive in the Bosphorus that the unimaginable happens. Ece and Meltem are enjoying the underwater experience when what feels like a meteor crashes into the water beside them. The meteor is actually a fancy car, which has plunged in with lights ablaze. As it sinks further into the deep, the women see that there’s someone trapped inside the vehicle. Worse, it’s someone they know. Ece and Meltem do everything they can to rescue Selen, another woman who goes to school with them, but they’re too late. By the time they bring her to the surface, she’s already dead.

Unable to shake the memory of what happened, Ece wants to investigate. Meltem has no interest in digging deeper into Selen’s death but circumstances prevail, pulling them into an orbit of lies and corruption that could very well have deadly consequences for them both.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/05/22/evil-eyes-sea-by-ozge-samanci/

May 21 2025

Sabotage At Casa Grande Springs by DD Sterner

This middle grade mystery-adventure hearkens back to the Famous Five and similar novels I devoured as a kid, tho with one crucial difference I’ll talk about later in this review.

Thirteen year-old twins Brice and Brianna Hendrix have recently moved to Florida, and are spending the summer helping their mom by volunteering at the retirement center where she works. Casa Grande Springs also happens to be where their grandfather Mr Opa lives with Weaver, the half Saint Bernard, half Labrador who’s as much the twins’ dog as his own.

The twins are thrilled that their best friend Daniel Gonzalez has joined them in volunteering there, too. All three of them expect a pretty cushy gig where they’ll get to fish in the pond, explore the woods and practice their archery in their copious down time.

Unfortunately for the young teens, a series of weird events keeps cutting into their plans for leisure. While the wild animals getting loose on the premises might just be the unfortunate result of someone leaving a door open to the local and varied Everglades wildlife — necessitating that the kids spend a lot more time on clean-up than they’d anticipated — there’s no innocuous explanation for the collapse of a recently constructed porch roof. Someone is deliberately sabotaging the retirement home, but why?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/05/21/sabotage-at-casa-grande-springs-by-dd-sterner/

May 20 2025

Grown-up Graphic Novels to Seek Out!

Even for the decidedly bookish, it can be tough to stay current with new grown-up graphic narratives from small publishers! Here are four gems out this season that are worth having on your radar. Checked Out by Katie Fricas is out today, May 20th; Second Shift by Kit Anderson, and George Takai’s next graphic memoir It Rhymes with Takei are coming out in early June; and I Ate the Whole World to Find You by Rachel Ang came out in April. Whether your taste is unsettling magical realism or inspiring progressive memoir, there’s something for you here!

the cover of Checked out by Katie Fricas seems to have a young woman flying with some pigeons and booksChecked Out by Katie Fricas, published by Drawn and Quarterly, tells the story of Lou, 20-something and living her best queer life in New York City, juggling dating, an interesting job at a private library, and working on her passion project of writing an epic graphic novel about Cher Ami, a heroic pigeon of World War II.

The bright, vibrant art has a lot of character, in a style that kind of reminds me of some of Kate Beaton’s earlier sketchier stuff, but with more magic markers.

As someone who has been a grown up already for a … while …. I don’t always love stories of disaffected 20-somethings finding their way in life. But Lou is a wonderful character and we get to see her interacting with her friends in really affirming ways, and with New York City in a lot of fun scenes. I recommend Checked Out if you like stories about weird jobs, NYC, cartoonists figuring things out, and/or pigeons.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/05/20/grown-up-graphic-novels-to-seek-out/

May 19 2025

There Doesn’t Have To Be A Reason by MC Kasper

As a chronic thinker who tries not to over-dwell on things, I cannot even begin to tell you what a relief it is to find a book like this. My constant compulsion to justify myself is likely a product of being raised by overly critical parents, so finding a kids’ book that short-circuits the idea that everything has to have a reason or a use or a purpose besides “I like it and I think it’s cute” is honestly staggering — and so, so valuable — to me.

But not only does MC Kasper just flat out state in the title and thesis of this picture book that sometimes There Doesn’t Have To Be A Reason, she also sneakily introduces science facts to young readers, as Bear and their animal friends discuss what all their tails do.

Bear has a stubby little tail that they think is cute. Their friends, however, want to know what the purpose of Bear’s tail is. After all, other animals’ tails play a big part in their everyday lives, whether with movement, communication or safety. What does Bear’s tail do?

As Bear and the other animals try out various activities to see whether Bear’s tail can be useful in the ways that the others’ are, Bear and their friends learn an important lesson. Not everything has to have a practical use in order to be appreciated and admired. Sometimes, it’s just enough to exist. Love, after all, isn’t something you earn. Unlike trust and respect, love is a feeling that doesn’t have to make sense. Most of the time, it’s just there, and that’s okay.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/05/19/there-doesnt-have-to-be-a-reason-by-mc-kasper/