Wish I would have had this book alongside all my Beverly Cleary books back in middle school. Like Cleary, Jason Reynolds clearly remembers what it wasWish I would have had this book alongside all my Beverly Cleary books back in middle school. Like Cleary, Jason Reynolds clearly remembers what it was to be a kid — the private humiliations, the silliness, the outsized misconceptions, the way the tiniest bit of support can change a day. ...more
Sometimes a book feels like it has always existed. It’s not that it’s predictable nor unadventurous, merely that you can’t shake the feeling as you tuSometimes a book feels like it has always existed. It’s not that it’s predictable nor unadventurous, merely that you can’t shake the feeling as you turn pages that it is familiar — you’ve read it before or just known that it existed for so long that it feels as if you had.
The Secret Horses of Briar Hill was that way for me. Other blurbs for it compare it to The Secret Garden (it does have a secret garden) or The Chronicles of Narnia (it does have tiny British children in big houses), but really, I think what they mean is this: it feels like it has been sitting invisibly on the shelf next to those classics for decades, waiting to be discovered. It feels old. Right. Uncovered, rather than written.
It is a simple story: a girl in a World War II children’s hospital —Emmaline — has been seeing winged horses in the mirrors of the building. When she discovers that an injured pegasus has arrived in a secret garden, an intimate and wintery quest unfolds as Emmaline performs tasks for the Horse Lord. It is a book about the magic of hidden places and the colorless misery of war and also a book about kindness in all its forms. Originally, I had typed that it was also a book about illness, but the draining fight against the “stillwaters” in Emmaline’s lungs is really just another battle in the war devastating Britain.
The Secret Horses of Briar Hill is a morsel of a book, just 231 pages on my e-reader. I read it in a single hour and a half session, which felt perfect: the ability to linger in the shivering atmosphere of the book without interruption seemed right. Theoretically this is a middle grade novel, but I can’t decide how I feel about that. I would hand this immediately to someone who had enjoyed CODE NAME VERITY or FROM SALT TO THE SEA or any of the other YA historicals I’ve loved within recent memory and I’d also hand it to any adult who grew up with the classics mentioned above and expect them to enjoy it, but I’m curious to know how my eleven and twelve year olds feel about it. So much of what made this book poignant to me was empathizing with the unsaid experiences of the adults around the children in the book, and although the book would work fine without that insight, there is one beautifully heartbreaking moment in particular that becomes muted if you aren’t paying close attention to the adults in the scene.
I adored it. It is not a bombastic novel nor an epic novel. It’s a sweet, sad, beautiful whisper in your ear. Enjoy....more
This middle-grade graphic novel is a series beginning in all the satisfying ways and none of the frustrating ones.
Hicks takes her time setting up mulThis middle-grade graphic novel is a series beginning in all the satisfying ways and none of the frustrating ones.
Hicks takes her time setting up multiple characters and drawing the world (literally), showing us how many alleyways she could have turned down but didn't, hinting at the stories she might have told but hasn't yet. By staying the course on Kaidu's budding friendship with a girl from another part of the city, Hicks keeps the story cohesive and suitably intimate. There were three things that struck me the most: 1) I read this with Thing 1, who is 11, and both she and I were very pleased with the parkour-visuals of Kaidu learning to run over rooftops. 2) There's a monkish tower centering both the city and the book, and as a sucker for hermit-mythology-magic-people-hiding-in-trees-towers-cars-whatnot-tropes, I'm keen to learn more about it as well (luckily for me, I think, as the second one is called The Stone Tower). 3) This entire volume gently touches on the words we use for each other and for ourselves, and I think it offers kids a hard-to-teach lesson in a way they can effortlessly digest.