Zevi Takes the Spotlight (Orca Currents)

Written by Carol Matas

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-459838826

128 pp.

Ages 9–12

RL 2.7

April 2024

 

Some gift! Unlike other gifts, this one is not returnable. (p. 2)

Zevi's gift? He's psychic. Sometimes he can see into the future, or dream about something that is going happen, hear someone's thoughts, or even talk to the dead. When he dreams of the location of a missing 5-year-old girl, he helps the police find the child unharmed. But, for a Grade 7 boy who wants to be an actor, he doesn't appreciate the celebrity, both good and bad, that comes with this good deed.

Now Zevi's family is getting dragged into the filming of a movie starring Robert Lemon when their glass-and-steel home is selected as a location for the futuristic movie. Problem is that Zevi keeps sensing a dark cloud associated with the star and the boy is worried that Mr. Lemon is in danger. When repeated accidents occur on set, i.e., at their house, Zevi, his best friend Nir, and Zevi's family use their proximity to the movie to do some sleuthing to discover who might want to hurt Robert Lemon.

 

Zevi Takes the Spotlight is another fast-moving hi-lo book in the Orca Currents series, which are high-interest books written at a lower vocabulary and reading level, here at 2.7. (RL 2.7 is associated with readers in the seventh month of Grade 2.) Carol Matas, a prolific writer of everything from picture books to historical fiction, paranormal, fantasy and sci-fi, capably writes a compelling mystery for middle-grade readers at a less challenging level. She weaves a story of real characters, kids who want to try new things or don't, who want to be famous or don't, and who want to connect with others. And they've got a mystery to solve. They may have a few tricks to help them out, like Zevi's psychic ability, but that "gift" is both beneficial and an obstacle, as Zevi learns. 

 

Zevi may want to be an actor when he is older but he's learning early what fame can mean when he gets a taste of it. Still, it doesn't stop him from doing good for others or learning how to deal with it. His brush with celebrity may put him in the spotlight but he's now seeing beyond that attention to a path that will allow him to be both who he is and who he wants to be.

The Hanging Girl

Written by Eileen Cook

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

978-0-544-82982-4

308 pp.

Ages 13+

October 2017

Skye Thorn is a tarot card reader, helping her peers with their questions about love, school and more.  But, though she cultivates an image of having psychic powers, Skye is just an astute observer of human nature and a sneak at private files and conversations.  Her mother might purport to have the gift but Skye knows she herself does not.

Still Skye is a teen who has always wanted a certain life and had a willingness to make it happen. 

Destiny is like a boulder.  Bulky and hard to move.  It's easier to leave it alone than to try to change it.  But that never kept anyone from trying.  Trust me: I'm a professional. (pg. 1)

She hates her name, Candi, the one she was given by her 15-year-old mother, and has managed to get her friends and school to use her middle name, Skye.  She had woven a story about her father, whom she has never known, being a military hero.  That story ended badly, though, and had her labelled a liar and headed for counselling.  Now, she’s telling her best friend Drew that she’s saving her money so that they’ll be able to get an apartment in New York City when Drew heads to art school next year.  But she hasn’t. 

When she is approached to use her psychic flair in a scheme to kidnap popular and wealthy Paige Bonnet, Skye convinces herself that it would be alright.  Paige would not be hurt and Skye would get some of the ransom money.  Her role would be negligible: all she had to do was convince the police that she was having visions of Paige’s disappearance and to help direct their investigation.  Ah, the best laid plans…

Like the tarot card called the Hanged Man, which suggests someone at the crossroads, Skye is balancing who she really is with what she wants people to see and what they actually do see in her.  From her mother to Drew and classmates and then the police and others, Skye's self is hanging, perhaps precariously as she makes choices.  She truly is The Hanging Girl. But the mystery that is Skye extends beyond her, embedding readers in a young adult thriller with a myriad of twists and reversals and red herrings.  Never, never can the reader tell what will happen next or whom to believe.  The tagline "Trust no one. Deceive everyone" is especially apt.  The plot is intricate and multilayered and, even when Skye figures things out in a climactic graduation ceremony setting, I was never convinced I knew the truth. That just tells you how convincing Eileen Cook's writing is.  It is tight but complex, and she never lets the plot lag or the storyline get caught on ineffectual plot twists.

Eileen Cook, whose books Unraveling Isobel (Simon Pulse, 2012), The Almost Truth (Simon Pulse, 2012), Remember (Simon Pulse, 2015), and With Malice (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) have been reviewed on CanLit for LittleCanadians, always has some mystery amidst the teen drama but she is particularly adroit at relationship dramas.  Her characterizations and dialogue between characters and inside Skye's head are especially compelling in The Hanging Girl.  Except for several chapters conveyed as Paige's written account of her ordeal, most of Eileen Cook’s text is in the first-person narrative of the young tarot card reader trying to assess her situation prior to Paige's disappearance and then while the teen's family and police investigate.  She's gotten herself involved in something desperate and is in far too deep to get out cleanly.  Still, though she lies and manipulates, it's surprising how sympathetic Skye is as a character.  She always believed that she was destined for a nothing life, so the readers will cheer for the girl who tries to see herself beyond a life at Burger Barn.  As such, the ending will floor you.

See beyond the mess that is Skye and the situation in which she finds herself and discover a thrilling plot of truths and lies and shadows in The Hanging Girl. It's a little dark but more angsty than criminal and definitely an accurate take on the desperate measures people will take to achieve the lives they feel are warranted.

Flashback

by Simon Rose
Tyche Books
978-1-928025-23-8
155 pp.
Ages 8-12
2015

Max seems like a typical fourteen-year-old boy: he hangs out with his friends; he has to endure parenting, or lack thereof, from his father; and he keeps secrets, especially the one that would make him look like he was going crazy.  You see, Max keeps seeing this boy, about his age, with a thick mop of black hair watching him and then disappearing.  And Max continues getting these bizarre images of being restrained on an operating table and a hypodermic needle and a girl with green hair.  It’s all very weird and frightening.

Since the images began at the cemetery when he’d stood beside the stones of Jonathan Dexter and his son David, Max does a little research.  He meets a man named John Carrington, a retired private investigator, who had been involved in a case twenty years earlier when the fourteen-year-old son, David, of politician Jonathan Dexter went missing.  With the tip from a psychic, the boy’s remains were found a few years later, just prior to Jonathan Dexter’s own death in a fire.  But just when Carrington found a connection to other missing persons’ cases, the whole investigation was shut down.

The next day, Max is shocked to learn that Carrington has been found dead in the park.  Slipping into the private investigator’s office while renovations are being done, Max uncovers documents and photos related to the Dexter case, including a connection to a researcher named Aleksander Kovac. Following the clues revealed within, Max makes the acquaintance of the psychic named Deanna Hastings and the teen bizarrely time slips into David’s life twenty years earlier.  And from there and then, Max tries to solve the mystery of David and Kovac and a weird headache-causing young man named Kane.

Flashback is an action-packed adventure perfect for middle grade readers.  Young readers will enjoy the plot-driven story rife with the supernatural, bad guys, evil experimentation, and time slip. While I found some of the plot progressions to be a little contrived, I think younger readers will appreciate the fast pace and suspenseful thrill of learning what really happened to David Dexter courtesy of a middle-grade sleuth.

Parallel Visions: A Teen Psychic Novel, Book 1

by Cheryl Rainfield
Rain and Sun Press
ASIN: B00A8763K6
146 pp.
Ages 13+
2012

Having your breath taken away by something incredibly beautiful or by love seems so serene and captivating. But when Kate, 16, loses her breath regularly because of her severe asthma, it is a life-threatening, fear-inducing situation.  She knows she could die when her body reacts to cigarette smoke, pollution, perfumes, aerosols, hair products and such, but she is especially disturbed by the visions she has when she has a severe episode.  Worse yet is that no one seems to believe her about what she sees in her visions, usually horrific events that was destined to happen.  Sharing those visions just brings confusion, suspicion, interrogations. and overwhelming despair for what she cannot change.  Her parents try to be supportive but they're obviously pulling back from believing her.  Her older sister Jenna, married right out of high school, may be close to Kate but she too doesn't accept Kate's visions as reality. 

This is especially problematic when Kate has a vision of Jenna's husband, Mason, beating her up.  More surprising is that during that same asthmatic attack, Kate also has a vision of a girl attempting suicide. Although she doesn't know the girl exactly, Kate knows she is connected to Gil, the boy to whom she was speaking when the attack came on. Kate's biggest fear at this point is wondering how she can help save both of them when she has already failed to save a single person.

Fortunately, Gil believes her when she tells him about her vision, as his Nana is a medium.  He confirms that his older sister, Inez, has been having a hard time with their mom leaving last year but Kate also knows the girl has been harassed by other students for acknowledging her homosexuality.  He goes home to check on Inez and later confirms with Kate that Inez had been contemplating taking an overdose but was now talking to him and their Nana, and hoping to meet Kate.

Things don't go so well for Kate at her sister's apartment. Jenna, who still feels animosity towards her sister for getting the greater share of her parents' attention and preventing her from enjoying many teenage-girl accoutrements (e.g., makeup, perfumes, etc.), denies that Mason has ever hit her.  But, when Kate spies a framed photograph, minus the glass, that she had seen get broken during Mason's beating of Jenna, Kate is convinced that Jenna is lying.  Sadly, their parents don't believe Kate either.

With the number of severe asthma attacks escalating, perhaps due to her own desire for clarifying visions, Kate continues to have horrifying images of Mason trying to discredit Kate by talking to a doctor, of Mason murdering Jenna and of Mason spying on his wife through her cell phone.  Gil, her only support, insists Kate let him accompany her or she text him as needed and introduces her to his Nana and sister, who confirm that her visions are real and offer their love and support.

Author Cheryl Rainfield is no stranger to trauma, identifying herself as a survivor of horrifying abuse.  But the focus for her characters is not on the trauma but on the survival -- to retain a sense of self while finding the physical and emotional strength and courage to endure and recover.  Regardless of her sister's denials, Mason's arrogance and aggression, her parents' lack of support, and her debilitating asthma, Kate perseveres, even knowing that her physical and emotional struggles could lead to her own death.  Ensuring the survival of another is what drives her, and ultimately she must find the means to do the same for herself.  And even though there will never be a fairy tale ending when the likes of abusers such as Mason are present, Parallel Visions' resolution is satisfying, hopeful and encouraging that the abuse is not the whole story.  

•   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •

Special Announcement!
Check back tomorrow as I'll be revealing the new cover of Cheryl Rainfield's upcoming release, STAINED.  To celebrate, she'll be giving away tomorrow only Parallel Visions as a free Kindle ebook on Amazon.

Small Medium at Large

Written by Joanne Levy

Bloomsbury Children's Books

978-1-59990-836-6

193 pp.

Ages 9-13

2012

Lilah is the Small Medium at Large.  She is only 12 (hence, the small) and her newly acquired psychic ability (making her a medium) is released (i.e., at large) after she is struck by lightning while clutching a metal tent pole at her mother's outdoor wedding.  Luckily, as the great cover indicates, Lilah is an endearing child with a colourful supporting cast to help her manage:  her kind but awkward Dad, just getting back into dating; her loving mother and new step-dad Stan, now away on their month long honeymoon; her best friend, Alex, who finds the value in Lilah's new gift; and her dead grandmother, Bubby Dora, who tells it like it is with wisdom and love, advising Lilah she can't "be everything to everybody."

Getting this psychic ability is a shock in itself but having dead people talking to her wherever she goes could become problematic.  Luckily, most of the spirits she "meets" are good-hearted souls who want to help: her Bubby Dora wants to help Lilah's dad find someone nice so he wouldn't be so lonely; Serena, a former bandmate of Lilah's music teacher, wants him to start up their old band; Miss Marion, the lunch lady, who is able to steer Lilah away from lousy meatloaf and such in the school cafeteria; and Mr. Finkel, the father of the boy on whom Lilah is crushing, just wants to connect with his son.

But, sharing her gift with others is especially awkward, even though Alex is sure that Lilah could make loads of money selling her services.  Luckily, Lilah is more apt to use her gift to help others, including those whose nasty behaviour could have earned them her disdain and disregard.

Small Medium at Large has all the hallmarks of a great middle-grade read.  The plot focus is simple i.e., Lilah's new-found psychic ability.  The characters are mostly of the kind variety with only a couple of nasty ones added for flavour and even they can be redeemed.  And the stories resolve themselves amicably when characters connect.  Even the book trailer from Joanne Levy demonstrates the light-heartedness of the book.  Joanne Levy shares, without preaching, that supporting one's family and friends can bring good karma even if you have to live through the awkwardness of puberty and first crushes.