Shark Teeth: she's not really a biter

Shark Teeth

by Sherri Winston 

Pub Date: 16 Jan 2024 

Bloomsbury Children's Books

 

Kita is a really identifiable character, a girl going into grade 7 whose mission is to look after her younger siblings, keep their home life on track amid her mother's partying and absenteeism and cruelty, and most of all keep the family from being split up into different foster homes AGAIN.

She’s also got hyperdontia, two rows of teeth. The kids at school call her Sharkita or Shark Teeth. She's heard all the hurtful phrases that everyone who is physically different faces, and by now expects them. Which new person would ask her what’s wrong with her teeth? Which would say no offense before saying something that could only seen as offensive? Or, what hurt the most: which would pretend she wasn’t there at all?

Kita wants to join after school activities like her friends do. She wants to be a kid. And that seems to be what the new assistant principal is encouraging. Even when she’s trying out for the dance and twirl team at school, with her mother's blessing, Kita’s stressed about whether Mama is actually looking after the younger siblings or has gone off again. She has episodes of severe muscle spasms, but her mother just tells her they’re a sign of being crazy. If she tells anyone about them, she could get locked up. Mama's really an expert at cutting off Kita from anyone who might help her. 

 

This is a touching story of Kita's struggle to become a kid again: to learn to trust others to look after her siblings better than she can, to accept help and support and even love from people who truly have her best interests at heart. Foster kids will see their own struggles here, and other kids will relate to Kita's insecurities as well as learning empathy for classmates who too often are mocked for their poverty, their enforced maturity, their visible differences.  

Five Stars.

#NetGalley #FosterCare #FosterHome #Family #FoundFamily #Family Dysfunction #MiddleGrade #Twirl #DanceTeam #School #Friendship #Bloomsbury

The Unlocking Season - a tour-de-force from Canada's Grand Master of Crime

 

The Unlocking Season*

by Gail Bowen

Canadian Grand Master of Crime Gail Bowen turns in a tour-de-force for her series devotees with The Unlocking Season, the nineteenth entry in her Joanne Kilbourn series.

'Unlocking' here refers not only to solving the crimes both large and small that occur, but to unlocking long-buried memories and emotions from Joanne's youth. She's acting as a script consultant for a documentary series about the decades-long intertwining of her family’s superficially serene life with the decidedly un-peaceful life of that notorious artistic dynasty, the Love family.

The documentary opens on a flashback, a young Joanne and her best friend Sally Love, on a raft at a lake where they'd spent so many golden summers. Longtime series fans will recall what happened during that last idyllic summer: an event that changed all their lives forever, and built relationships between the characters that endure, deepen, and sometimes tragically end during succeeding novels.

As the documentary script comes together, much is revealed or revisited from the earliest books, arising gracefully in conversation and inner monologues, punctuated by the sights, sounds, and aromas of life in a large, loving, multi-generational family. Series regulars make appearances, catching the longtime fan up on developments in the lives of family members and friends. For new readers, trying to keep track of all the characters mentioned in the early chapters could be challenging, however Bowen does her usual exemplary quick sketches delineating the family connections and their historical significance, and as rapidly lets us know which characters are leaving the stage and which will be key players in this particular volume.

The plot kicks into a higher gear quickly enough once the chief scriptwriter is found wandering, dazed and delusional, after a location-scouting trip to a renowned photographer's island cabin. More troubles pile up, pointing to larger issues in the writer'slife, and soon the whole show is in jeopardy.

The efforts of Joanne and the production people to get the documentary back on track are a jointly a foray into the mysteries of television production and a slow-build corkscrew penetrating the messy personal and business relationships of cast members and production crew. Tempers flare. Disagreements spiral into destruction. Nobody knows who to trust as the tension thickens on-set and off. The stage is set for a conflagration that may destroy the production as well as the people.

As a longtime reader of the series, I'm easily drawn back into worrying for my favourite characters, especially Taylor Love, daughter of the ill-fated Sally, whose life I have followed with a whole heart for nearly two decades now. I also particularly enjoy the author's attention to sensory details: the repeat appearances of forsythia outside the window where Joanne rests her eyes and mind, The swath of Prussian Blue silk enfolding us in Joanne’s memories of a woman she both adored and feared. The meals that tantalize your tastebuds. Most particularly the paintings done by Sally Love and her father Desmond; these fictional images form the backbone of many scenes in the series. In this book they are deliberately placed to inspire, reflect, and add layers of meaning for both characters and readers as the complex plot yields up its secrets one shattered lock at a time.

 A word about the narration: at first the narrator seems too young for Joanne at sixty, but her characterization grew on me and the female characters were easy to distinguish from each other. The masculine voices were less successfully differentiated and somewhat flat-sounding in terms of emotional tone.

 This novel is highly recommended as either a fitting continuance or an introduction to this long-running series.

*Audiobook via NetGalley