May 20, 2024
Faced with an impending move from their Australian hometown of West Hobart, two girls form a friendship across time in this white-knuckled climate survival tale. Nyx lives in a Tasmania that’s “gritty and dry... the ancient forests gone, along with regular snow fall.” Grieving her mother’s death, she’s frustrated with her always-angry father, who wants to start a new life elsewhere. Seeking solace, Nyx climbs her beloved towering pine (“the only surviving bit of green out here”), scribbles a discontented note, and shoves it in a knothole. Bea, who’s navigating a similar situation, visits the tree, writes her own note, and finds Nyx’s missive as she goes to hide her letter. Using the tree to communicate, the two girls try to meet
up, but eventually realize that Bea lives in 2023, while Nyx is in 2093. Even stranger, Bea’s actions can affect outcomes in Nyx’s ravaged world—and possibly save her new friend. Vivid prose by Lim (Tiger Daughter) and Gordon (the Wordspinners series) evokes a grimly realistic world informed by contemporary issues surrounding climate change. The girls’ experiences with bullying, online escapism, and grief throughout add further emotional depth to this dual-timeline narrative. Nyx is “brown and freckled and dusty”; Bea reads as white. Ages 8–13.
July 1, 2024
A story of fellowship and finding oneself against the backdrop of climate change, told from the perspectives of two Australian girls and featuring one extra-special pine tree. Nyx and Bea live in West Hobart, Tasmania, and they're both lonely. Nyx has lost her mother, and because her father's met someone online, she faces the possibility of moving away from everything she knows. Neurodiverse Bea, who has hearing loss and loves The Lord of the Rings, is regarded as weird and is bullied at school. The two girls form a friendship through letters they leave in a pine tree that's close to both their houses and that they both find comfort in climbing. The image-rich writing is clever, offering puzzles for readers to untangle alongside the characters before the action truly begins and the pace picks up. When Nyx's neighborhood faces extreme fires and then flooding, Bea finds it within herself to speak up and bring her school community together to help. Lim and Gordon powerfully explore themes of climate change and working together, showing how one young person can jump-start big action. This genre-blending book will appeal to many, including readers who love grappling with real-world problems, those who appreciate speculative fiction, and anyone seeking a thoughtful, character-driven coming-of-age story. Nyx has brown skin and black hair; Bea is cued white. A vividly rendered, evocative story about the power of connection and maintaining hope through despair. (authors' note) (Fiction. 9-12)
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
September 1, 2024
Furious at her father's plans to move them to the Northland away from her home in Tasmania (sea-level rise is making the island uninhabitable), Nyx scrawls an angry missive and shoves it into a knothole in her favorite pine tree, the only tree still alive in her battered neighborhood. The note reaches Bea, a lonely "weirdo" bullied at school, who is also about to be involuntarily moved away from Tasmania. The two begin a correspondence, but when several attempts to meet go awry, they discover an unbelievable truth: Nyx lives seventy years in Bea's future. Now, with Nyx's unwanted but necessary escape route from wildfires, floods, and critical food shortages cut off, Bea attempts to overcome her own social alienation and rally her school to create a shelter and cache of food in time to save Nyx in the future. The time-slip reveal is intriguingly teased out with hints and incongruencies that readers will eagerly pick up on, and both Nyx's bleak life and Bea's specifically Tasmanian leafy suburb are convincingly drawn. And although (as with most time-travel plots) one must willingly overlook a few plot holes, and Bea's transformation from bullied weirdo to climate change activist is rather rapid and wrinkle-free, the climactic scenes should motivate eco-minded readers to plant their own gifts for a hopefully less dystopic future. Anita L. Burkam
(Copyright 2024 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
July 1, 2024
Furious at her father's plans to move them to the Northland away from her home in Tasmania (sea-level rise is making the island uninhabitable), Nyx scrawls an angry missive and shoves it into a knothole in her favorite pine tree, the only tree still alive in her battered neighborhood. The note reaches Bea, a lonely "weirdo" bullied at school, who is also about to be involuntarily moved away from Tasmania. The two begin a correspondence, but when several attempts to meet go awry, they discover an unbelievable truth: Nyx lives seventy years in Bea's future. Now, with Nyx's unwanted but necessary escape route from wildfires, floods, and critical food shortages cut off, Bea attempts to overcome her own social alienation and rally her school to create a shelter and cache of food in time to save Nyx in the future. The time-slip reveal is intriguingly teased out with hints and incongruencies that readers will eagerly pick up on, and both Nyx's bleak life and Bea's specifically Tasmanian leafy suburb are convincingly drawn. And although (as with most time-travel plots) one must willingly overlook a few plot holes, and Bea's transformation from bullied weirdo to climate change activist is rather rapid and wrinkle-free, the climactic scenes should motivate eco-minded readers to plant their own gifts for a hopefully less dystopic future.
(Copyright 2024 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)