Arc Review: The Witching Wind by Natalie Lloyd

Image: Scholastic

The Witching Wind by Natalie Lloyd. 368 p. Scholastic Press/ Scholastic Inc. September 17, 2024. 9781338858600.

I can't believe we are staring down the end of July and August begins tomorrow! I hope you are enjoying every moment of your summer.

I featured The Witching Wind by Natalie Lloyd for Middle Grade Monday in my Library Links group in our school's learning platform and forgot to post here. This dual narrative is told by eleven-year-old Roxie, who was looking forward to starting middle school and Grayson, who has moved in with yet another foster family and about to be the new girl yet again. 

Roxie was humiliated at the sixth grade swim party and is thrilled when her beloved grandmother offers to take her on tour with her folk band. Grayson uses a walker due to the fact that her bones are brittle and she is prone to fractures. She thinks that this newest placement, as nice as they are is just temporary, since her beloved sister, Beanie, promised to become her legal guardian when she turns eighteen, which is soon.

Then, the witching winds come and boy, they are fierce this year! They take what folks love most, so when both Granny and Beanie go missing without a trace, Roxie and Grayson team up to track them down, even if it means facing the witch who sends the winds.

This work of magical realism is filled with endearing, quirky characters, a lush southern setting and mystery. Fans of Natalie Lloyd will not be disappointed. I loved this and just might reread it with my ears if it's released in audio format. 

Teen Tuesday and Audiobook Review: Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley

Image: Macmillan Publishers

Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley. Unabridged e-audiobook, ~11 hours, 32 minutes. Read by Isabella Star LaBlanc. Macmillan Audio, May, 2023. 9781250877277. (Review of e-audiobook borrowed from public library.)

Happy Tuesday! We are you coping with lots of thunderstorms on and off for the past week. The skies go from partly cloudy to ominously cloudy quickly and so, I've had to be judicious with Boo's long walks.

Teen Tuesday features Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley. This is a stand-alone companion to Ms. Boulley's debut, The Firekeeper's Daughter, which takes place ten years earlier. Pauline Firekeeper-Birch, the chill-twin, is looking forward to a summer of fishing on her beloved Sugar Island in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, while her anxiety-prone, academically oriented twin, Pauline, works as an intern at Tribal Counsel. Unfortunately, she wrecks the Jeep she shares with the family and her Aunt Daunis paid for the repairs, expecting Perry to pay her back. So Perry becomes a reluctant intern to Cooper Turtle, curator of the Tribal Museum, who is involved in negotiations with the local college to return tribal artifacts under the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The red tape and slowness of the process infurates Pauline, and so, she takes matters into her own hands and removes seeds from the college store-room. Cooper Turtle no longer trusts her and releases her from her internship, leaving Perry to scramble to find another mentor. Meanwhile, several women in the community have gone missing and there have been deaths of Black people at the hands of the police, leaving Perry worried for her Black father's safety and further fueling her fight for social justice.

Native tradition, culture and history are woven seamlessly into what becomes a suspenseful heist story. Perry's first-person narration is snarky, intelligent and hilarious at times as she lives up to her nickname, "Perry Pulls No Punches." The Sugar Island setting is vividly drawn as are supporting characters. Blunt language, references to sexual assault, blackmail and violence make this compelling story more suitable to thoughtful, mature teen readers.

Warrior Girl Unearthed was just named a Boston Globe Horn Book Award Winner in the Fiction and Poetry category. I read this one with my ears and appreciated hearing the correct pronunciation of the language. New-to-me narrator Isabella Star LaBlanc brought Perry to life and paced her performance well. Happy reading!

Middle Grade Monday and Audiobook Review: The Storyteller by Brandon Hobson

Image: Scholastic Inc.

The Storyteller by Brandon Hobson. Unabridged e-audiobook, ~6 hours. Read by Curtis Michael Holland. Scholastic Audio/ Scholastic Inc. May, 2023. (Review of downloadable e-audio borrowed from public library.)

Middle Grade Monday features The Storyteller by Brandon Hobson. Cherokee sixth grader, Ziggy lives in Poisonberry, New Mexico with his father, grandmother and older sister. He suffers from anxiety as well as grief over the disappearance of his mother ten years earlier. He sees a therapist who helps him cope when the anxiety becomes too much. He doesn't like the fact that Native American women disappear all the time and "no one seems to do much about it." When Alice, an oddball classmate who happens to wear a hearing aid tells him about the Nunnehi, mischievous shape-shifting spirits who are said to dwell in the caves in the desert just outside of town, Ziggy is convinced he can find answers about his mother there. Ziggy and Alice, together with Ziggy's best friend, a white boy named Corso and his sister set out after midnight to explore the caves. They encounter a series of magical beings, each with a story to tell on their quest through the desert.

The magical realism of this layered story is mind-bendy. Ziggy's anxiety and his methods of coping with it are authentically portrayed. He and his extended family are close and supportive. He is especially close to his grandmother and relies on her stories as guidance. New-to-me narrator, Curtis Michael Holland delivered a quiet, well-paced, thoughtful performance. 

Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner

279 p. Candlewick Press, February 12, 2013. 9780763665531. (Borrowed)

In an alternate London of 1956, where the outcome of an un-named war was different, Standish Treadwell lives with his grandfather in an awful neighborhood called Zone 7, misses his parents and is barely surviving at school. He is not just dealing with bullying classmates, but brutish teachers who not only routinely cane their students, but one beats Standish's classmate to death in a harrowing scene. Thankfully, the repressive government does not stand for it. Unfortunately, the punishment is meted out in front of the class. (Shudders.)

When Standish's best friend and protector, Hector, goes missing and he is done with his grandfather's peculiar ways, Standish starts to seek his own answers. He may be labeled a dummy due to his dyslexia and a freak due to his heterochromia (two different eye colors), and, as such, at risk for removal due to the government's standards, but he is an astute observer and possesses a strong moral compass as well as great courage.

I read this disturbing, utterly brilliant novel in one sitting and it absolutely shredded me. The suspense is nearly unbearable, the world-building is vivid and if you don't read the final chapter through tears, you have no heart. I highly recommend this alternate history/ dystopia. I won't soon forget this one.