Bookcase Bizarro: MG/YA Book Reviews, February 2025

MG/YA Book Reviews by a MG/YA Writer

Welcome to the February edition of Bookcase Bizarro!

In author news, I’m still very much in drafting mode, so not a lot to report beyond writing, writing and more writing. (YAY!)

I’ve fallen off the social media wagon recently, and I have to say I don’t miss it. For the past several years, I’ve tried to keep to a schedule, posting 2 or 3 times/week. Lately, that’s dropped to about one post per month, maybe less. It’s been restful. I’ve been reading way more, doomscrolling way less. (Instagram is particularly addictive for my type of brain.) Without constantly trying to come up with Insta content that screams #interestingwriter, I have more room and more time for book creation. I’m thinking a lot more about posting less often. To be honest, I’d like to give up social media altogether, but I wonder how people would find out about my work? Blogger Anne R. Allen recommends commenting more on other people’s blogs as a substitute, but I’m not convinced this would totally replace social media. Maybe a combination of less frequent posting and more commenting?

I’ve definitely put the kibosh on setting up an online store until I’ve published a few more books. I’m super-glad that I revamped my website last summer in anticipation of this important move. Direct sales will be an important part of my publishing future… in the future. It took a lot of time to research WooCommerce, sales taxes and distributors, but I’ve got a much better handle on what setting up and running an online store will entail. (Hint: It’s not the thing to be doing while writing a book.)

Speaking of books…

My Garrison Creek novella, Rogue Wizard, is tentatively set to release in late 2025, followed by the release of Shadow Farer (working title), the Shadow Apprentice sequel, in 2026. After all of that happens, I’m sure I’ll be DELIGHTED to work on some gnarly, technical online store stuff.

This time of the year usually means rain in Toronto, but we’ve got snow this year. (Again, YAY!) So pull your reading shawl around your shoulders as we expIore the inner workings of a wizard’s boarding school with a middle-grade monster handler as our guide.

A quick note to new readers: books that are available from the Toronto Public Library will be marked #TPL, because books don’t have to be new or owned in order to be loved.

MG Novel

Twelve-year-old Autumn Malog works as a beastkeeper at the Inglenook school for wizards. Along with her Gran and three older brothers, she tends to the school’s monster menagerie, which is used to train the next generation of monster-fighters. A truly terrible monster, the Hollow Dragon, has set up residence in the nearby woods, which are growing at an uncontrollable rate, much faster than the king’s soldiers can cut it down. Only one hero can stop it, and he’s still a student.

Cai Morrigan doesn’t have much in common with a servant like Autumn Malog. According to an ancient prophecy, Cai is the Chosen One, fated to kill the Hollow Dragon and rid the kingdom of its evil influence. So there’s no reason for Cai to seek Autumn out, except that he can’t stomach monsters and faints whenever a dragon is near. Still, he’s brave enough to approach Autumn, a junior beastkeeper, to ask for help.

Autumn has her own reasons for wanting the dragon dead. Everyone thinks it devoured her brother, Winter, whose mysterious disappearance from the school is still unexplained. When Autumn hears her brother’s voice and sees him inside a window at the school, she’s convinced the Hollow Dragon is not to blame and that an evil spell has trapped him instead. Without magic, she’s powerless to free him.

Autumn agrees to help Cai master his fear of dragons if he helps her to rescue Winter from the clutches of the school, an arrangement that may prove too dangerous, if not impossible, for either of them to keep.

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It’s been a long time since I reviewed a MG novel—too long. It’s time to remedy that.

The School Between Winter and Fairyland’s title initially put me off from reading the book. (My bad.) The word ‘fairyland’ is too twee for an edgy MG novel that completely subverts both Chosen One and hero tropes (extremely well, I might add). However, we’re talking about Heather Fawcett here, who wrote and the wonderful Grace of Wild Things and the Emily Wilde books, so I soldiered on. And am I ever glad I did.

Fawcett gives us a closeup of the school from the viewpoint of the staff, not the students, with a middle-grade, junior beastkeeper as our guide. Autumn’s life is set and circumscribed, like that of every Inglenook servant. Through her eyes, we see the power and privileges that Inglenook’s students are oblivious to. Their pretentious self-importance is felt Autumn, who is keenly aware of the inequities involved in her job. (It makes me wonder whether Fawcett was as enraged as I was by the Happy House Elf servants at Hogwarts, and this is her response.) Autumn chafes against her assigned role, even as she despairs of ever being able to shed it. She’s been trained to think of herself as smaller and less important than Inglenook’s future heroes, but she grows more and more unconvinced of her supposed lack of worth.

The question is: how does Fawcett create this shift?

Artfully.

Autumn may not like the way she and the other servants are treated at Inglenook, but finding out that Winter’s been imprisoned inside the school itself motivates her to start questioning everything she’s been told. This plays out with Cai, too. How can someone who faints at the very sight of dragons be fated to kill one, like the prophecy says? Autumn can’t see it. She’s the one who must fight to protect Cai from the various monsters she introduces him to as he tries not to faint. It’s almost as if she, a mere servant, is more powerful—and effective—than the Chosen One. When Cai reveals that the school has restricted teaching magic to wizards, although there are many other kinds of people who can wield it, Autumn begins to wonder about her family and herself. Her questions create a domino effect that not only threatens to topple Inglenook’s stronghold on the truth, but sets the stage for a different kind of heroism.

Fawcett really excels at character, human and monster alike, and particularly enjoys subverting the relationships between them. Some of my favorite monsters are the gwyllions, terrifyingly vicious bird-like creatures who refer to themselves in the third person as ‘the Lords and Ladies,’ and couch their violent tendencies in courtly manners.

Autumn’s family is far from perfect. Only one of her brothers treats her well, and the grandmother who takes care of them does so grudgingly, complaining about the burden. She’s gruff in the way of an independent woman who’s unexpectedly saddled with child rearing and is not genuinely abusive or unkind. Personally, I love KIDLIT families that are as messily relatable as the ones in real life, especially when paired with a resilient kid hero like Autumn Malog.

A well-conceived and richly-realized Chosen One fantasy with several refreshing twists. Recommended for upper middle-grade readers, especially those who would like a behind-the-scenes look at an exclusive wizard’s boarding school. (#TPL)

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Thirteen-year-old Ermin is a gifted mechanic and the worst student at St. Anselm’s Training School for Orphans. She’s just failed her exams for the third time—something nobody’s ever done. Worse, Ermin’s been running her own repair business for money—something that’s expressly forbidden. If the headmistress finds out, Ermin will go to prison. Her future will be over before it’s even begun.

But that’s not her only secret.

Her best friends, Colin and Georgie, are wizards in a world where magic is strictly controlled. Ermin worries that her friends will be captured, drained of their power, then banished. When Georgie’s caught aiding the Wizard’s Resistance, Ermin repairs a broken flying carpet so all three of them can escape.

Hesitant to join the Resistance because of her lack of magical power, Ermin steals an experimental device from a wizard hunter that could destroy every wizard in the Creek. She’s faced with a choice: either smash the device or convert it into a different kind of weapon—one that not only helps wizards but just might get her an apprenticeship at the prestigious Guild Academy.

Ermin’s got one chance to get it right. If she fails, she risks losing her two best friends… and her dreams.

Find Shadow Apprentice at your local library through Hoopla or buy from online retailers:

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Thanks for being a Bookcase Bizarro reader! I’ll be back next month with more author news, and more MG and YA book reviews. See you then!

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