Claws

Gr 4–6—A rather alluring cover featuring a black cat silhouetted against a full moon pulls readers into a novel that proves to be an uneasy amalgam of genres: gothic, fantasy, dystopia, and teen rebellion. Emma's older sister has vanished, and her parents have depleted their finances in an attempt to find her. The family moves to a dilapidated trailer park at the edge of a magical forest, but they inhabit a world in which magic is frowned upon rather than celebrated. In fact, Emma is expelled from school when she reveals the claws she's developed since befriending a talking cat that hangs around their trailer. The feline has convinced Emma to swallow a pulsing marble-size object that will give her control over a pride of cats, and it clearly gives her other catlike attributes as well. What is not clear is who is controlling whom as she searches for Helena in a world filled with duplicity and illusion. The Grintis take on an overabundance of material in their debut novel, and the result leaves readers feeling that most of it is unexplored or insufficiently conceived. Emma's family is Vietnamese American, but there is no sense of whether this has shaped her life, so why mention it? What has caused the rift between the hags, elves, faeries, and other magical beings and the rest of society? Chapter headings from "CragWiki.org" range from mention of "the Salem Cat Trials of 1912" to dismissive statements such as "All books of magic sold on eBay are fakes." Does this world believe in magic, try to ignore it, or persecute it? It's all a messy mystery.—Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Library, NY