The Changeling Sea

By Patricia A. McKillip

Since the day her father’s fishing boat returned without him, Peri and her mother have mourned his loss. Her mother sinks into a deep depression and spends her days gazing out at the sea. Unable to control her anger and sadness any longer, Peri uses the small magic she knows to hex the sea. And suddenly into her drab life come the King’s sons—changelings with strange ties to the underwater kingdom—a young magician, and, finally, love.

The more I think about this book, the more I like it. This book had such a beautiful tone and grace to the telling, it was magic to read. It was simple, but the depths were amazing. I was entranced. I felt like I was swimming through the words; poetic, eerie, and captivating. Peri is such a strange protagonist, ragged and ordinary, estranged from her mother and longing for her lost father. Peri learns some magic and becomes enmeshed with the destiny of the sea itself, and finds her answers and works through her sadness by helping the princes of her kingdom. It’s a tale filled with longing, love, loss, and hope. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, even when I was in the middle of reading it. I sighed when I finished, relieved and a little lighter. It was therapeutic in a way, showing that destiny isn’t always fixed and that even the worst hurts can be healed.

I give it a 4.25 out of 5

Prince Tennyson

By Jenni James

This captivating story is about a ten-year-old girl who is trying to prove if God is real or not. Her dad died in Iraq the year before and now she wants to know if she’ll ever see him again. Prince Tennyson was his nickname because of how dashing he looked in his uniform—he was her handsome prince. This is an endearing father-daughter story told through the eyes of a ten-year-old. It is a story of overcoming trials, moving on, and finding not only faith in yourself, but in a loving God as well.

I’ve read Jenni James’s Timeless Fairy Tale series and enjoyed most of them, so when I saw she wrote a book about a little girl searching for the answer to “is God real?” because she wants to see her father who died in Iraq, I knew I wanted to read it. Especially when I saw the high ratings it’s gotten, if only just under a hundred ratings on Goodreads. This was a cute and simultaneously sensitive story about loss and the need to know what’s next. Chelsea loved her Dad more than anything, and she has to figure out how to help her mom smile again, make sure her two little siblings don’t forget their Prince, and she desperately wants to know if she’ll get a hug from her Dad again. It’s a faith-affirming and sweet book about family and love that never ends. I liked it, but it was a little predictable (me having read a lot of similar short stories).

I give it a 3.25 out of 5 

What Came From the Stars

By Gary D. Schmidt

The peaceful civilization of Valorim is under siege…It’s about to fall to the dark Lord Mondus. In a panic, a few heroes bind all their world’s beauty into one precious necklace and send it across the cosmos, hurling past a trillion lighted stars…all the way into the lunch box of sixth-grader Tommy Pepper of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Tommy puts it on, and soon he starts doodling pictures of the twin suns of Valorim and hearing strange music. But at first, he is too preoccupied to notice; his mother died recently, and his sister isn’t speaking, and his father is fighting a real-estate agency to keep their home. But when strange minions of Lord Mondus begin ransacking Plymouth, Tommy realizes he must protect his family from villains more dangerous than a vengeful realtor and her bus-stop-bully daughter. Gary D. Schmidt masterfully presents the epic story of a family trying to redefine itself in the wake of tragedy.

 

So…this was an interesting turn for this author, and while at first I was wondering about his choice of fantasy interwoven with real-life, I think I got it by halfway through the book.  Part of this book is the perspective of the different Valorim on the far away planet, and another part is in the much easier to understand perspective of Tommy Pepper.  At the beginning of the novel there was so much name dropping of alien people that I couldn’t tell left from right and wondered how a seasoned writer could make that mistake, and as I kept reading it kept niggling at me, but then I realized that this book really isn’t about the Valorim…it’s about Tommy and everything that happens with the Valorim, the monsters, the necklace, is a way to tell a story about loss and love and family. After I realized that, I also began to understand how cool it was that Mr. Schmidt tried this. Using the fantastical to approach well-known themes and problems is a great technique, and I enjoyed the book a lot more once I was focusing on what I knew I was supposed to. It’s actually a really symbolic book with a lot of poetic pieces to it. He’s a really talented author, and I’d recommend this to anybody who likes his other books. Nice job.

 

I give it a 3.8 out of 5 because of the beautiful tone and imagery and the underlying message.