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Book Review: Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Vampire Hunting (Serwa Boateng #1) by Roseanne A. Brown

Cover art for Serwa Boateng's Guide to Vampire Hunting by Roseanne A. Brown

Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Vampire Hunting (Serwa Boatang #1) by Roseanne A. Brown

Rick Riordan Presents, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1368066365

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

 

This is a wild ride of a book. Serwa Boateng is a Ghanaian-American (born in Ghana) 12 year old, the daughter of Slayers of vampires called adze, who look like fireflies and can possess people, and obaifyo, witches who use black magic. She has always been homeschooled, but after a supernatural attack on her home, her parents are sent on a mission she can’t be a part of and she is sent to live with her Aunt Latricia and cousin Roxy in Rocky Gorge, Maryland, a supernatural dead zone, where she will have to attend middle school and deal with microaggressions, hostility, racism, and an adze who has crossed into the dead zone, without help from her parents or the council that directs their missions.

 

When Serwa accidentally starts a food fight in home ec, she and four other students end up with detention, picking up trash in and around the school. While picking trash in the woods, they are attacked by an adze, and when Serwa explains what’s happening, they want to help. Eujun used to be friends with Roxy but when forced to pick between friends picked popular mean girl Ashley. Gavin is Black and a jokester. Mateo is Guatemalan and a model student, who stutters. Roxy’s father has been deported to Ghana. Their teacher, Mrs. Dean, has it out for Serwa, who she calls Sarah Boating, and Serwa thinks she is the adze.

 

The kids are terrible fighters and have no magic. Serwa calls on the earth goddess with a request to bless them with divine wisdom. They are sent to the underworld to retrieve her sword, which never stops fighting. Their mission is successful, and also incredibly funny. The goddess gives the kids divine wisdom and an elemental blessing that will let them draw on the power of their element.

 

The art teacher, Mr. Riley. reveals that the origin of the dead zone is unique because his ancestor, who had divine wisdom, and Roxy’s, who had black magic, combined them to protect enslaved people during a rebellion.

 

Ghanaian mythology is not something I was familiar with, so this was a fresh approach to the “chosen one” storyline. Serwa has a distinct voice and point of view that make her stand out from the current crop. While the story is sometimes predictable, I was wowed by the energy and rage at the end. Never underestimate a teenager in an emotional storm. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on July 28, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: Gravebooks by J.A. White

cover art for Gravebooks by J. A. White

 

Gravebooks by J.A. White

Katherine Tegen Books, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0063082014

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Buy:  Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com

 

In this sequel to Nightbooks, Alex Mosher wakes up trapped in a nightmare of a strange graveyard of stories, commanded, mysteriously, by the witch Natacha (who kept him captive and died during his escape in the previous book), and her jackal friend Simeon. Each of Alex’s unfinished story ideas are buried in a grave.. Natacha tells Alex he needs to dig each grave up and open the coffin. Inside each coffin is a blank book. Alex has to take the book out and jump down into the grave world to finish the story. When he finishes, the book bursts into flames, but the text of the story is transferred to the world above as the grave world crumbles. Telling the story causes a flower to grow: the better the story, the more unusual the flower.

 

Natacha and Simeon kidnap Alex’s friend Yasmin to threaten Alex into doing his best work, but he makes a deal with them that if they leave her alone, he will write them stories every night.. Yasmin feels responsible for Alex’s situation, and seeks out another fairytale witch, Maria Goffell, doomed to cut the hair of the dead. Maria tells Yasmin  she will need objects that represent Yasmin’s greatest fears, and Yasmin realizes she will have to return to Natacha’s apartment, where she and Alex were imprisoned in Nightbooks. Yasmin finds items in the apartment she can use and is able to defeat Natacha, finally. Maria and Yasmin finally trap Simeon, and Alex is able to escape, resurrect his friendship with Yasmin, and defeat his writer’s block, for the price of a story read to Maria.

 

This had a slow start, but picked up fast, and was a great companion to Nightbooks, which I cannot recommend enough to horror-loving middle-graders. J. A. White knows how to write nightmares.

 

White also name-checks the authors from his dedication: Bradbury, Matheson, King, and Jackson are all Easter eggs in the book, making this a fun book for adults as well. It’s a great book for horror-loving parents to read with their kids. Nightbooks was made into an excellent movie: I hope Gravebooks gets a similar treatment. Highly recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on July 21, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: Through the Witches’ Stone by Scott A. Johnson

Cover art for Through the Witches' Stone by Scott A. Johnson

 

Through the Witches’ Stone by Scott  A. Johnson

Timber Ghost Press, 2023

Available: Paperback

Buy:  Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

 

12 year old  Hadley and her younger twin brothers are stuck for the summer on her grandma’s isolated farm. It isn’t as boring as she expects: she learns she is descended from a long line of witches, and her grandmother starts teaching her magical spells. Hadley’s grandma has only three rules: stay out of the locked rooms upstairs, stay out of the woods, and don’t invite strangers into the house. But while the twins have each other, Hadley has no one her age to talk to, until one night she spots a girl in a white dress and sneaks out to meet her.

 

Although her brothers are uneasy, Hadley keeps it a secret from her grandma. There’s a magical barrier that prevents the girl from crossing between the house and the woods, so she lets the girl lead her into the woods, and they become friends. Then Hadley makes the mistake of inviting the girl into the house. She turns out to be a changeling, who kidnaps Hadley’s brothers and grandma. Hadley must go into the inhospitable woods alone and attempt to find and defeat the changeling to rescue her brothers and grandma. She saves a pukwudgie (a short creature with hedgehog quills down its back and a large nose that originates in Native American mythology) She is also accompanied by a duo of brownies she calls Tom and Jerry. Despite the unfriendly folk and forest, Hadley wins them over and eventually, after some really creepy and compelling adventures, rescues her family.

 

There’s a lot of grief work going on. Hadley’s father was killed in a car accident she blamed her mother and herself for. Her mother is grieving her sister, husband, and father. The pukwudgie is grieving his family. Much of this is about making peace and letting go of grief and fear, but it does not overwhelm this fantastical, scary tale reminiscent of Mary Downing Hahn’s books, the Spiderwick Chronicles, and Outside Over There.

 

 

Posted on December 31, 2023 by , Reply
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