Oct 14 2022

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

In a sleepy Yucatan town where her family sits atop the social pyramid in the 1920s, Casiopea Tun discovers how they came to occupy that condition. It’s an act of rebellion against her tyrannical grandfather, who took her and her mother back into the family home when her father died, but never ceased to remind them how much they owed him, and how favored other family members were. Casiopea’s cousin Martín is her particular nemesis. He’s a big fish in a teeny-weeny pond, sure of himself as only the spoiled scion of a rich clan can be, and insecure as only a young man who has never really achieved anything on his own can be. To make matters worse, he knows that grandfather Tun really thinks Casiopea is the one with gumption, but she’s a girl and can’t count in his version of the world. “Too bad you’re not a boy” has cut both members of the younger generation to the quick.

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The skeletons in the family closet turn out to be just one skeleton, and it’s in a locked chest instead of a closet. It also turns out to be the skeleton of a Mayan death god. Mean grandfather Tun helped the now-skeletal god’s slightly younger twin chop of his head and usurp his role as ruler of the underworld. But gods are tricky to kill, and Hun-Kamé was only partly dead and mostly locked inside a chest. When Casiopea springs the lock, the bones spring back together, except for one small shard that springs into her hand.

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Oct 13 2022

Bibbidi Bobbidi Academy 1 & 2 by Kallie George & Lorena Alvarez Gomez

It’s time for fairy godmothers (and fathers), or at least ones in training, to take center stage!

In the first book of this charming series, Rory And The Magical Mix-Ups, Rory Spellington is super excited to attend the Bibbidi Bobbidi Academy, the boarding school for fairy godparents in training. Unfortunately, she’s a little behind on her spelling, having spent her childhood amidst regular children, as her fairy parents chose to live incognito among humans as booksellers instead of living with their magical brethren. As such, her peers have already been to preschools and summer camps that taught them basic spells, instead of the mundane stuff Rory knows.

Rory really wants to impress her new classmates and teachers but everything seems to go wrong almost upon arrival. She works hard and is slowly getting better, but still feels totally unprepared when it comes time for her first big magical assignment. Will her spellwork be up to the task of granting a child’s dearest wish? Better yet, will she discover hidden strengths in her quest to become a fairy godmother?

The second book, Mai And The Tricky Transformation, features Rory’s best friend Mai Magicwhisp, who is a maximalist after my own heart. Mai, however, is even more extra than I am, insisting on more more more when casting her magic spells. When it comes time for the second big assignment of her stay at Bibbidi Bobbidi Academy, she finds herself accidentally pairing up with snooty fellow fairy Tatia. Tatia always wants to be first and best, so the girls are originally in sync when it comes to completing their assignment. But when Mai’s thirst for more accidentally transforms Tatia into a unicorn, will the girls be able to set aside their differences and find a cure, before Tatia’s dream of being a fairy godmother is lost forever?

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Oct 12 2022

Audrey L & Audrey W, Book 2: True Creative Talents by Carter Higgins & Jennifer K. Mann

Oh, man, what a note-perfect take on being in the second grade, and how tricky and possessive friendships can be.

Not, ofc, that the Audreys are possessive per se. But there’s no denying that they’re best friends, and provide their teacher Ms Fincastle with zero Teamwork Trouble. They’re not like Bettina and Mimi, who are also supposedly best friends and art partners. In the Audreys’ opinion, Mimi could stand to treat Bettina a little better.

But when Ms Fincastle decides to shake up her classroom’s seating arrangements, the Audreys are split up. Audrey L finds herself at a table with Bettina, who might need extra encouragement during an earthquake drill. When the Audreys are forced to include Bettina in their talent show performance, will they find their friendship split apart by this interloper, or will they learn valuable lessons about the power of friendship?

As this is a kids’ chapter book, it’s pretty obvious what the answer to that question is. I was pretty surprised, however, by how much actually goes on in this book, as the Audreys hang out with their families, friends and classmates, finishing art projects, having dinner and just generally learning what it means to be a good person. Audrey L has an epic meltdown near the end, the aftermath of which is handled with aplomb. Her narrative voice feels both rich and authentic, reminding me in many ways of Peg from Peg + Cat, only with less math and singing, but more art, school and family.

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Oct 11 2022

Twelfth Grade Night (Arden High #1) by Molly Horton Booth, Stephanie Kate Strohm & Jamie Green

Shakespeare and I have a love-hate relationship, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Twelfth Night due to its hapless heroine Viola. I’ve even seen the play presented once professionally, in Malaysia. The production was pretty great, and the story overall less ridiculous than some others of the Bard’s (not that that’s saying much, tbqhwy.)

But how well does the 17th century play do when transplanted to the 21st century? Really well in some parts, tho any flaws in this graphic novel adaptation, set in a modern-day high school (with very neat paranormal elements!), I lay squarely at the feet of Shakespeare himself.

We start with new girl Viola Messina, who’s thrilled to get away from her old private boarding school so she can dress the way she likes at the local public school, Arden High. She thought her twin brother Sebastian was going to come with her, but at the last minute he decides to stay at St Anne’s, leaving her feeling lonely and friendless as she walks into her new school. Fortunately, Tanya, Queen of the Fairies and leader of Arden High’s social committee, is on hand to help show her around.

Vi literally bumps into hot poet and influencer Orsino in the cafeteria, and the two strike up a friendship. As Vi develops a crush on him, she doesn’t realize that he thinks she’s a lesbian. Thus, he thinks it’s totally fine to ask her to ask her new friend Olivia if Olivia will go to the dance with him. But Olivia — who also thinks Vi is into girls — has a crush on Vi. Shenanigans ensue.

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Oct 06 2022

The Tower Of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town In Stories And Photographs by Chana Stiefel & Susan Gal

This is an important book about the Holocaust and one woman’s efforts to memorialize the lives so tragically lost to Nazi cruelty. It’s an inspiring true story matched only by the astonishingly vivid artwork Susan Gal uses here to bring Yaffa Eliach’s story to life.

Y’all, I could go on and on about this art. So much care has gone into it, from the blue-black of Yaffa’s hair to the exquisite patternwork of the clothes, to the truly inspired montage of photos over artistic depictions of everyday life in the Polish shtetl of Eishyshok (now a Lithuanian town called Eisiskes.) Ms Gal was inspired by the Tower Of Life memorial Dr Eliach curated at the Holocaust Museum and it shows in every joyful brush stroke, in every moment of hope captured in the face of despair. This art deserves to win awards.

The accompanying text is competent to good. I know that that sounds like weirdly faint praise when it’s not meant to be. It’s just that the actual point of the book is only truly elucidated in the afterword. The Tower Of Life serves to remind viewers that real people, people who loved and laughed and were just doing their best to get by, had their lives brutally stolen from them. Remembering them as victims has value, but not as much as remembering them as fellow human beings whose lives should have been celebrated, whose stories need to be remembered as touchstones for our shared humanity. The preceding text almost closes that circle between celebrating life and promoting empathy but doesn’t quite manage it, which feels like a weird disservice to everyone involved. I mean, this is a kid’s book. Feel free to spell that point out for the, likely very young, reader.

And, I mean, I get it, you don’t want to go overboard saying “it could happen to you” and traumatizing some poor 8 year-old. Writing children’s books is hard work, so more power to all the children’s books writers out there!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/10/06/the-tower-of-life-how-yaffa-eliach-rebuilt-her-town-in-stories-and-photographs-by-chana-stiefel-susan-gal/

Oct 04 2022

The Fairy Atlas: Fairy Folk of the World by Anna Claybourne & Miren Asiain Lora

This is such a gorgeous volume for anyone of any age who has an interest in fairy folk the world over. I highly recommend getting it in hardback, as the paper quality is absolutely wonderful: luxuriously thick and offering a wonderful canvas for the art and information on offer inside.

And what art and information! Anna Claybourne takes a thoughtfully continental tack to her examination of fairy traditions the world over, beginning in Europe and circumnavigating the world to end in South America. Each section starts with a two-page spread of an illustrated map, followed by explanations of each type of fairy highlighted in said map, before addressing a common theme of fairies worldwide. It brings to light different and often little-known mythological creatures, attributing them to their originating cultures in a way that’s succinct yet flavorful. Honestly, I could read pages and pages more of this kind of stuff, especially in the way that this book merges academic anthropology with the kind of classic folk tales you often hear growing up. Whether discussing the regal Ao Si of Ireland or the thumbless Duende that range as far afield as Patagonia, Ms Claybourne writes with both knowledge and wit.

The art, for the most part, keeps up beautifully with the text, tho there were certain choices made that had me grimacing. As a Malaysian, I’m far too used to grinning and bearing it when popular maps are more vague than precise when it comes to depicting my part of the world, tho in fairness, this book does not claim geographical accuracy. I also wasn’t the biggest fan of having important information land so close to the interior gutter, forcing me to flatten the book further than I wanted to — ironically, a layout issue that I have to constantly worry about in my other career as an independent game designer.

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Sep 29 2022

The Loud House #16: Loud And Clear by The Loud House Creative Team

Y’know, I think this was the first Loud House anthology where I actually wasn’t clear on what the theme was, which is ironic given the title.

That said, I really appreciated the editor’s afterword praising veteran comics letter Wilson Ramos Jr. His work graces the Loud House pages and ensures that it’s fully legible for younger readers, as well as those of us with, ahem, veteran eyesight. It’s always nice when credit is given where it’s due, especially to undersung artists whose contributions are just as important as the more celebrated pencillers and inkers on comics titles.

This collection of Loud House shorts riffs off of the popular Nickelodeon cartoon revolving around middle child Lincoln Loud, his ten sisters and assorted other family and friends. There are several inter-related bits on fashion, dolls, farm animals and musical performances, as the various members of the Loud family get up to their various hijinks. Lincoln himself suffers a (fake) fashion faux pas when he shows up to school in the same shirt as a friend, while Leni both wins a design competition and gets involved in fixing more (fake) fashion faux pas while trying to order dinner for the family. Why do I say “fake” in both instances? Because unless the clothes are completely inappropriate for the setting, there’s no such thing. Let people wear what they want, mixing and matching as they please. Maximalism!

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Sep 28 2022

Cats Rule The Earth Tarot: 78-Card Deck And Guidebook For The Feline-Obsessed by Catherine Davidson & Thiago Corrêa

Y’all, I love Tarot so much, I write games using the cards as inspiration. I was thus utterly delighted when offered the chance to review this set of Tarot cards, that adapts the classic Rider-Waite imagery to feature adorable cats of all breeds and colors.

And wow, did this set absolutely exceed my expectations! It comes in a gorgeous, sturdy presentation box that swings opens smoothly and closes tightly, with an A5-ish-sized guidebook inside resting over top of the deck itself. The guidebook is honestly fantastic. It briefly covers the historic connection between cats and the mystical before delving into the Tarot, using clear language that’s great for newcomers to cartomancy while also including material that will pique the interest of long-time collectors and card readers. For example, this was the first place I can recall ever encountering the Cat’s Paw divination spread, which I thought very well-suited to this deck. I even tried out a sample query using it, which I haven’t included here because y’all, it got real personal real fast for being only five cards.

The guidebook also included really smart exercises for interpreting card groupings. I particularly liked the idea of studying the cards in groups by number. The book was also more luxe than the usual guidebooks that come with Tarot decks, including illustrations of each card with their possible interpretations. This makes for really handy studying when you don’t have space to pull up a deck proper but still want to develop your reading skills, especially in relation to these particular cards.

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Sep 27 2022

Ways to Share Joy (A Ryan Hart Story #3) by Renée Watson

with the most charming illustrations by Nina Mata.

Ryan Hart is the one perpetually in the middle: between her prank-loving big brother Ray and her new baby sister Rose, and between her two best friends KiKi and Amanda. Fortunately, Rose is a little sweetheart, even if she does seem to take up almost all of Mom’s time and energy. Ray, however, is your typically self-centered older brother. When a prank war between the siblings backfires and threatens to ruin not only Thanksgiving but also Grandma’s birthday surprise, will Rose be able to maintain her trademark sunny demeanor?

As if that isn’t enough for a fifth-grader’s plate, she also has to deal with a kid at school who will not stop teasing her. Ofc, his shenanigans fade to nothing compared to the demands of one of her best friends, KiKi. Since their other best friend Amanda moved away to a new school, KiKi has become increasingly needy about being Ryan’s best best friend. How will Ryan reconcile what she knows to be true with her desire to preserve her friendships?

Luckily, Grandma and co are there to help Ryan figure out not only how to keep calm but also how to keep spreading joy. These are great lessons for any kid, told with kindness and heart in Renée Watson’s latest middle-grade novel. It’s especially refreshing to see a Black girl take center stage, as well as to absorb all the intricacies of her life growing up in blue-collar Portland, Oregon. While the book series and its heroine have been compared to the immortal Ramona Quimby, I think a more relevant comparison belongs to the even older Pollyanna series of books, with Ryan serving as the modern update. And by no means do I say that pejoratively, as the jaded and more worldly might. Ryan is a deeply lovely child, and while she doesn’t have a Glad Game of actively seeking out the positive, she is naturally more inclined to look for the good in a situation than to focus on the bad, an outlook which can help anyone build both inner strength and character.

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Sep 25 2022

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

Considering a book of scholarly articles about the history Chinese international relations, I wrote that it was “chock full of implied stories” and looked forward to the day that I could read some of them. Shelley Parker-Chan chose a later inflection point from Chinese history to tell the story of She Who Became the Sun, but it’s a similar notion, and part of a welcome trend in fantasy writing: opening the genre to historical backgrounds that aren’t just warmed-over England. Parker-Chan sets her novel at the turn of Chinese dynasties, when the last heirs of Chinggis Khan faced growing rebellions in the south that eventually toppled their rule.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

Dynasties, marching armies, the fate of millions: all of that is far away from the book’s beginning. It starts with a poor family, Zhu, and their second daughter who only vaguely knows her age in a time of famine. Parker-Chan leaves the girl nameless as she describes the privations that have reduced the Zhu family from 13 people to three: father, daughter and favored son Zhu Chongba. He is the eighth boy in his generation of male cousins, considered lucky even though all his brothers have perished. For his twelfth birthday the father takes him to a fortuneteller, who trembles at the greatness that he sees in Chongba. Emboldened, the girl asks for a reading of her fate, too. “Then, as if from a distance, she heard the fortuneteller say, ‘Nothing.'” (p. 20)

But when their village is raided — soldiers? bandits? is there a difference in a time of civil war and famine? — and father Zhu is killed, it is not Zhu Chongba who seizes greatness. He soon lies down and dies. His sister is incredulous. How could he, to whom greatness had been promised, choose nothingness? A thought soon appears: “If he took my fate and died … then perhaps I can take his, and live. … She took off her skirt and put on Chongba’s knee-length robe and trousers; untied her hair buns so her hair fell loose like a boy’s, and finally took the amulet from his throat and fastened it around her own.” (p. 26) Having taken all that, she takes his name too, and takes herself off to the Buddhist monastery where their father had once promised to send Chongba to be a monk when he was old enough.

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