Kirkus: The Lipan Apache Moreno cousins, who are growing up in the Sunny Park mobile home community, feel powerless after Maisie’s best friend, Mara, dies and they lose their cousin Connor to a wrongful conviction for voluntary manslaughter. When Owl, a winged boy who’s the son of Big Owl, the legendary “father of birds,” cryptically warns Maisie about a tragedy that will befall people close to her, she vows to prevent it. Podcasters are nosing around Sunny Park, trying to find out more about Connor. But Maisie and Verona are sharing a house-sitting job at an apparently haunted horse ranch, while Joel’s days are full looking after foster kittens at their Grandma and Great-Aunt Fran’s house—and complicated by a shapeshifting feline. This coming-of-age tale follows the cousins on a quest that will both challenge and define them. It unfolds in a creative mixed-media format: Little Badger (Lipan Apache) seamlessly interweaves third-person narration with the leads’ first-person chapters, which are printed on ruled notebook pages, and Rajunov’s artful full-color comics panels. The gorgeous, multicolored palette of the book’s pages evokes the Southwest Texas setting. Genre-defying, fantastical, and imbued with deeply human realism, this narrative is grounded in the vulnerability, resiliency, and bravery of young people as they overcome hardship and right historical, generational, and systemic wrongs. A magical story that both haunts and enchants.
Jul 062026