Last look at teen book fest – heroes for our age

 After hearing authors speak, what can we do except – read their books! Part of the fun of the annual North Texas Teen Book Festival is perusing the tables of books from authors new to me. But books were still on view at this year’s virtual fest, so I grabbed a handful from authors I’d just heard speak. Particularly tempting were B. B. Alston’s head-spinning twist on middle-grade academia fantasy and a nonfiction volume from Texas author Christina Soontornvat.

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Review of: All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team

Author: Christina Soontornvat

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Rating: five stars

All Thirteen

All Thirteen’s Newbery Honor Book status pegs it as a “middle-grade” book aimed at readers in grades 3-7. But just as Christina Soontornvat is a stickler for never writing down to young readers, her writing is also compelling to those beyond middle school – even to adults. The rescue of 12 young boys and their coach from a flooded cave system in Thailand in 2018 was world-wide news. But ephemeral news articles can’t replace detailed investigative reporting. News sources at the time tended to focus on the rescue divers – including the tragic death of a retired Thai Navy Seal – while slighting the immense cast of background players. And no doubt due to privacy concerns, details about the boys themselves were skimped.

Soontornvat was able to interview some of the chief dive consultants as well as, thanks to her family connections who served as interpreters, numerous Thai players in the drama – from the boys themselves (who she later met) to the teams who pumped water out of the cave to increase divers’ accessibility, to those who provided meals and support services during the ordeal.

All Thirteen opens with a typical Saturday for the Wild Boars soccer team, whose members ranged in age from 11 to 16, and their completely typical post-practice excursion to a famous local cave on June 23, 2018. Although the official monsoon season had begun, the heaviest rains were not expected for a few more weeks as the boys and their young coach entered Tham Luang Nang Non – the Cave of the Sleeping Lady. They had no way to know that those blinding rains were about to arrive that very day.

Late that night, the director of a local rescue organization received a call that the boys were missing, and that their families suspected they had become trapped in the cave.

It would be 10 days before anyone has certain knowledge of the boys’ whereabouts. Ten days of not knowing if they were still alive. And of wondering how to bring them out before the cave flooded still more deeply.

Readers can tear through the action-packed and emotional story of the rescue itself, but alongside the narrative, All Thirteen includes numerous side bar articles on everything from Thai culture to the nature of the cave system to diving equipment, pictures of the process and the people who made it happen, the aftermath and the experience’s effect on the boys, and sources for additional reading. Highly recommended for readers of all ages.

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Review of:  Amari and the Night Brothers

Author: B. B. Alston

Publisher: Balzar + Bray

Rating: four stars 

Readers who think they’ve seen every possible take on the subject of youngsters in a school for magic will be surprised and delighted by B.B. Alston’s debut novel, Amari and the Night Brothers. With a determined young protagonist from the wrong side of the tracks in a school where magic is off-limits for its supernaturally talented students, anything becomes possible. After all, what curious youngster ever declined to do something just because it was forbidden?

Especially not Amari, who will dare anything to find her adored older brother Quinton. Once the star investigator of the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs, Quinton hasn’t been heard from since he went missing while on a dangerous assignment. Not heard of that is, until Amari receives surprise delivery of a message from her brother, along with nomination to the summer camp for junior investigators where he was once a star pupil.

Amari’s just been expelled from her own (non-supernatural) school for pushing back against fellow students who sneered at her as a “charity case.” She even dares to don the hideous suit the nomination mandated her to wear to her interview for Quinton’s former academy. And gaining admittance to her brother’s workplace at the Bureau (“the link between the known world and what is hidden”) seems the best place to begin looking for Quinton himself.

Little does she know the Bureau and its summer camp entry point are riven by the same prejudices, backbiting and jealousy she hoped to leave behind. Oh, and the kind of treachery that could cost Amari her life – and the life of the brother she adores.

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My sole quibble with Amari and the Night Brothers is Amari’s age. At one point, she is specifically stated to be twelve, which seems at least a couple of years too young for the friendship inching toward romance she experiences in the course of the book. Not to mention really, really young for adults to trust her with dispatching the worst supernatural criminal of all. I understand the age limit was intended to keep the story within the “middle-grade” bounds of books for elementary school-aged readers.

When protagonists reach their teens, their exploits supposedly leap into the range of “young adult” books. Or so we’ve long been told. However, at the North Texas Teen Book Festival, author Ally Carter (Winterborne Home series) noted that her 15-year-old character was now deemed too young for YA with its expected readership between 12-16 years because readers typically are drawn to protagonists slightly older than themselves. So, if a protagonist between the ages of 13 and 15 is too young for YA, why can’t she still be young enough for middle-grade?