Donald Maass Literary Agency

Shelf Awareness: The fourth solo novel for young readers from Newbery Honor-winning author Darcie Little Badger (A Snake Falls to Earth; Elatsoe) is a fairytale, a ghost story, and a striking narrative about trauma, community, and what we owe to the dead.

In a desert trailer park in Mockingtown, Tex., three Lipan Apache cousins battle with both personal and real ghosts. Sixteen-year-old Maisie’s grief over the death of her best friend, Mara, follows like a specter; Joel becomes the unwitting guardian of a lost animal child disguised as a kitten; and Verona is haunted by the very literal ghost that her non-native employers have unearthed by stealing from an ancient burial site.

Hovering above them all is Owl, a spirit only Maisie can see. Owl’s presence brought doom to her family’s doorstep once before, and he has arrived with vague news of more to come. Maisie, determined to avoid catastrophe, enlists her cousins to help her reverse the tides of fate, and she vows to make amends with whatever forces threaten their family.

Children of Owl is a dreamlike and sophisticated piece of genre fiction that is rooted both in Little Badger’s Lipan Apache traditions and the wider well of fantasy. Throughout, Little Badger uses a distinctly native lens to subvert horror and fantasy tropes–such as the haunted Indian burial ground and human transformation into animals and beasts–expanding on Lipan spiritual beliefs around ancestral traditions and animal people. The novel’s format fits the author’s tone, alternating between third-person narration, diary entries, and comic book pages. Artist Abigail Rajunov’s illustrations provide atmosphere, her scratchy, broken line depicting emotive figures with giant eyes. Her art shines in the colors of desert dawns and dusks, featuring golden skies bruised a cool purple and shadows taking on the dark rust of sandstone.

This YA novel contains complexly layered symbolism and figurative storytelling, but Little Badger’s prose is strikingly clear, making a somewhat obscure story feel accessible. Owl’s presence often acts as a proxy for Maisie’s post-traumatic hypervigilance, while Verona becomes a literal voice for her people when the ghost speaks and acts through her. Little Badger’s ability meticulously to meld fantastical worlds with Indigenous traditions is what gives this speculative work its satisfying weight and makes it feel entirely, magically possible.

Kirkus: Unhappy about being at summer camp instead of getting to stay home with his desperately ill brother, a 12-year-old boy follows a mysterious fog and meets the infamous witch of Cabin 23. Vernon’s brother had told him about the witch, but he’s surprised by how much the witch knows about him. Reluctant to talk about his own life, he settles in instead to hear “the scariest story ever told.” In it, a sixth grade Lipan Apache boy named Sean leaves Texas to stay with his cousin, Zeke, in Massachusetts after his mother’s cancer treatment led to bankruptcy. One day, Sean and Zeke find a missing cat and her kittens in an abandoned cliffside house. A girl named Jenny appears, warning of danger—just before the ground collapses, plunging the house to the shoreline below. Trapped by rising tides on an upper floor, the kids encounter a lurking monster. The ocean creature, angry over humans’ destructive, wasteful ways, offers them a deal: If they can guess one of its names, it will return them safely to land, and Sean is reminded of the monster in the Rio Grande from one of his mother’s stories. The cousins’ heritage is integral to this stand-alone series entry that weaves environmental themes into a layered, high-stakes survival story. The characters are caringly developed, adding emotional depth, and genuine tension and scares propel the story. Expertly crafted chills and thrills in a rich tale that’s so much more than the sum of its parts.

Library Journal: Vycol Ferec believes he’s working for the city of Wickhills, doing good and smoothing down the rough edges. However, he’s really the secret police, and this mission is going to get a whole lot of people killed, including his own team—unless they betray him first. He’s protecting a scientist who has discovered a way to destroy all the city walls, and everyone is out to capture that secret so they can do unto others first. Vycol Ferec is never certain whether he should keep running or stop fighting because he’s burning through his friends and his enemies, and it looks like no one is going to come out of this alive, possibly not even the city he loves. This gas-lamp urban fantasy combines an exciting adventure, a walk through dangerous, secret places, and one man’s crisis. The pace is relentless, the characters are unreliable at every turn, and the stakes are high with every step. VERDICT Recommend Mohamed’s (The First Thousand Trees) latest to lovers of gas-lamp fantasy, epic political machinations, or hidden motives and anyone who has wondered what a fantasy version of Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky would look like.