Gossamer Summer

April 1, 2023
Five children find a portal to fairyland. Ten-year-old Jojo and her sisters, 11-year-old Maisie and 5-year-old twins Amy and Bee, are spending their summer outside while their mom, an author, tries to meet her looming deadline. The girls while away their sunny days, reading, playing, and imagining. When Theo comes to stay with his uncle, who lives across the street, he joins the gang. Last year, Jojo, the group's storyteller, had woven an intricate tale of an impending attack upon the fairies from frightening skeletal birds she dubs "bone creatures," but she never finished the story after the death of her beloved Grandma Nan. When the quintet follow a fairy through a tiny door in a tree, they discover that Jojo's tale has taken on a life of its own, and she must summon the resolve to give it a conclusion. Bouwman's clever middle-grade fantasy has a delightful throwback feel, noticeably absent of technology or adult intervention as the children spend entire days outside together. As the group delves further into fairyland, Jojo struggles to reconcile her own grief but comes to realize that Maisie and Theo have their own heartaches to unpack. Jojo directly references Narnia as inspiration for her tales, but the book also has much in common with The Neverending Story. Physical descriptions of characters are minimal. A heartwarming fantasy exploring grief, friendship, and fairies. (Fantasy. 8-12)

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 10, 2023
Ten-year-old Jojo used to relish telling fairy stories, but when her Grandma Nan died the summer before this book’s start, Jojo’s interest in the stories died, too. Instead, she spends her summer vacation playing outside the family’s countryside home with her three sisters, 11-year-old Maisie and twin five-year-olds Amy and Bee, while their author mother works on deadline. When her sisters insist on building fairy gardens and find a “squirrel-sized greenish person” napping on their porch, Jojo realizes that each story the siblings have told has created a real fairyland. The tales have even established a catastrophic prophecy about innumerable flying skeletal creatures attacking a fen fairyland—creatures that are primed to return. Joined by 10-year-old neighbor Theo, jocular fairy Roland, and aloof cat Fabio, the siblings must rescue a boggy realm from their own fantasies in two days’ time. An omniscient narrator sets a playful tone and brisk pace in this humorous, E. Nesbit–feeling fantasy from Bouwman (A Crack in the Sea), and the fairies and younger sisters provide comic relief as Jojo and other characters unpack grief of their own. Maisie and Jojo are described as being paler than Amy and Bee. Ages 8–12. Agent: Tricia Lawrence, Erin Murphy Literary.

Starred review from July 1, 2023
It's summer, and ten-year-old Jojo and her three sisters have to entertain themselves because their romance-novel writer mom has a book due ("Mom on deadline was not nearly as fun as Mom not on deadline"). Banished outside, with their new friend, Theo, they make the most of their books, art supplies, and snacks. Things get more interesting, however, when a fairy turns up. Roland, "small and greenish and personlike," is demanding and very grubby. The story turns off-kilter and cheeky as we realize that Roland and his world are simultaneously real and a product of Jojo's storytelling imagination. (There's also an authorial voice that breaks through occasionally.) Cue trouble in fairyland and kids to the rescue. Bouwman pulls off this energetic slipperiness with such confidence and brio that we almost don't notice that the underlying story is one of bereavement, as the girls are coping with the death of their grandmother. The writing is a complete delight of originality and specificity: "It was an odd kind of flapping, not the sound that bird wings make in our world, but the sound that wings without flesh or feathers might make -- sort of like twigs swooshing quickly through the air. But more creaky, like wicker." Reliably funny, never once twee, clever in the way of kids and fairies, and authentically moving. Sarah Ellis

(Copyright 2023 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2023
It's summer, and ten-year-old Jojo and her three sisters have to entertain themselves because their romance-novel writer mom has a book due ("Mom on deadline was not nearly as fun as Mom not on deadline"). Banished outside, with their new friend, Theo, they make the most of their books, art supplies, and snacks. Things get more interesting, however, when a fairy turns up. Roland, "small and greenish and personlike," is demanding and very grubby. The story turns off-kilter and cheeky as we realize that Roland and his world are simultaneously real and a product of Jojo's storytelling imagination. (There's also an authorial voice that breaks through occasionally.) Cue trouble in fairyland and kids to the rescue. Bouwman pulls off this energetic slipperiness with such confidence and brio that we almost don't notice that the underlying story is one of bereavement, as the girls are coping with the death of their grandmother. The writing is a complete delight of originality and specificity: "It was an odd kind of flapping, not the sound that bird wings make in our world, but the sound that wings without flesh or feathers might make -- sort of like twigs swooshing quickly through the air. But more creaky, like wicker." Reliably funny, never once twee, clever in the way of kids and fairies, and authentically moving.

(Copyright 2023 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)