The Surface Breaks: A Reimagining of The Little Mermaid is a wonderful feminist take on the popular fairy tale. Louise O’Neill stays very close to Hans Christian Anderson’s original classic story (as opposed to the Disney version), but gives her little mermaid (Gaia/Muirgen) a much darker back story and provides a fuller description of the world that exists under the sea. Little mermaid Gaia has grown up under a misogynistic patriarchal system, where women are valued for their beauty alone. Gaia and her five sisters […]
Hope is the thing with feathers
This Newberry Medal winning YA novel is a fantasy/fairy tale about hope’s triumph over sorrow. Kelly Barnhill writes about a world populated by witches, dragons, monsters, and humans. She writes of bogs, forests, and towns separated by fear and magic. In this world, one town in particular, the Protectorate, engages in a terrible human sacrifice every year, wherein the youngest child in town is left in the forest as a tribute to an evil witch. It is an age old practice, perpetuated by the town […]
A Witch with a Badge
Black Magick is a really well written and beautifully drawn series by Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott featuring a police detective named Rowan Black who, unbeknownst to her colleagues, is also a witch. In Volume I of what I can only hope will be a long running series, Rucka and Scott introduce the reader to Rowan, some of her fellow Portsmouth police officers, and another witch named Alex, who is also Rowan’s friend/lover. The story opens with a Wiccan ritual in the woods interrupted by […]
YA Lit, Grief and Trauma: Part II
I Kill Giants is a graphic novel geared toward teens and young adults. It was nominated for and/or won a number of prestigious awards, including an Eisner. Much like the last book I reviewed (I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter), this story centers on the effect of grief and trauma on a young girl. In this case, our protagonist is 5th grader Barbara Thorson, a girl who revels in Dungeons and Dragons, has no friends amongst her peers, is frequently bullied, is defiant toward […]
Tackling Grief and Mental Health Issues in YA Lit
But how do we live with these secrets locked within us? National Book Award nominee I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter is a powerful young adult novel that deals with the very real trauma of grief and depression. Fifteen-year-old Julia Reyes, our narrator, lives in Chicago with her parents and older sister Olga, who has just died in a tragic accident. Julia is struggling with feelings of grief, guilt and anger, and her already fragile relationship with her parents is at the breaking point. […]
Good Read for Summer
I recommend Cinnamon and Gunpowder for your “beach reads” list this summer. It features kidnapping, pirates, adventure and battle on the high seas with a twist. The pirate who does the kidnapping and spreads terror throughout the British Empire is a woman — Mad Hannah Mabbot, a fearless captain with a bounty on her head. Our narrator is a chef — Owen Wedgwood, kidnapped from Lord Ramsey’s home in August of 1819 when Hannah arrives unexpectedly and kills Ramsey right before his eyes. Owen tries […]
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