Claws

August 1, 2012
After a slow buildup, this middle-grade fantasy offers some intriguing elements as it hurtles toward an exciting, if abrupt, ending. Emma, a 12-year-old Vietnamese-American, misses her older sister Helena, who has vanished mysteriously. Emma's parents have spent all of their resources trying to find Helena, so readers first meet the family as they move into a trailer park populated by supernatural beings, aka "crags." Neglected by her parents and taunted by her schoolmates, Emma's vulnerability makes her easy prey for Jack, a talking cat who has holed up in their new home. Jack convinces her to take on an unexpected role that includes magical powers. Adventures ensue as Emma learns how to use her new abilities and seeks her lost sister. Each chapter begins with an entry from "CragWiki.org," a device that offers the authors an additional, if occasionally awkward, method of worldbuilding. Unfortunately, Emma and her family are sketchily drawn, which makes it hard to care much about the outcome. On the other hand, the bad guys are quite compelling--the hag next door, for example, is deliciously creepy. Readers who persevere will find themselves caught up in the action and fascinated by the exquisitely imagined and decidedly different fairies. Clunky in spots, this nonetheless intriguing debut will likely appeal to fantasy fanatics; others may wish to wait for a more polished follow-up. (Fantasy. 10-12)

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January 1, 2013

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

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2012
Grades 3-5 Forced by hard times to move with her Vietnamese parents to a bad neighborhooda trailer park on the edge of the magic forest occupied by hags, dwarfs, dryads, and other downtrodden scags young Emma Vu finds herself leading a crew of unlikely allies on a search for her missing older sister, Helena, after a one-eyed talking cat bestows her with magical powers. The Grintis endow this semiserious debut tale with both a motley pride of authentically blase stray cats and a menagerie of enjoyably creepy creatures from ratters (a sort of cross between oversize rats and reference librarians) to a set of blind, glamour-wielding faeries who enthrall children to be their eyes and, as it turns out, are the villains of the piece. The climactic rescue follows a nervous interview with a child-eating hag, visits to a wild faerie nightclub, and treks through not one but two spooky magic forests. Readers will happily accompany Emma on her quest and look forward to seeing what uses she will make of her burgeoning magical powers in future episodes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2013
Emma, twelve, takes on cat magic to find her older sister, who is under the spell of glamorous faeries. Amusing "crag facts" open each chapter and give a glimpse into a bewitching alternate reality. The mythology of this magical world could do with a little more charm and development, however.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)