Pencilvania

October 2, 2021

Gr 4-6-Twelve-year-old Zora was an artist. When her mom died of leukemia, Zora and her younger sister Frankie move from Duluth, MN, to Pittsburgh to live with Grandma Wren, their mom's mother whom they barely know. In her grief over losing her mother, Zora also loses her interest and ability to draw, what she and her sister call her "Voom." One day when Zora is overwhelmed by her feelings, she and Frankie are pulled into a land of Zora's drawings, Pencilvania. Each picture is alive, three-dimensional, and attached to a memory. The villain of the land, a horse named Viscardi, has captured many of the creatures with binding black scribbles. Fueled by Zora's sorrow, he aims to destroy the world of drawings. In this fantasy land of her own creations, Zora must confront her grief over the loss of her mother and the changes her death brought to her own life. She uses her Voom to save her sister and her world of drawings. "Zora's" pencil artwork appears as illustrations throughout book. VERDICT This action-packed fantasy story confronts real-world feelings of grief, healing, power, and bravery.-Lindsay Persohn, Univ. of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee

Copyright 2021 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2021
Zora, 12, shares her mother's artistic gifts, but when grief and guilt lead her to destroy years of drawings, the results are astonishing. Voom is Zora and her mom's word for the artistic impulse that bubbles up inside. After disclosing her leukemia diagnosis to Zora and her sister, Frankie, Mom promised the girls she'd beat it. Ten months later, their far sicker mom is hospitalized in Pittsburgh, where the girls share their bus driver grandmother's basement apartment. Mom continues to be optimistic and avoid acknowledging the possibility of death. Frustrated and needing to hear a realistic prognosis, Zora uses her art to show her mother the truth of how ill she looks. Later that night her mom dies--and Zora's Voom goes away. When Grandma Wren disappoints Frankie on her seventh birthday, Zora's guilt-fueled anger erupts. Over Frankie's protests, Zora scribbles out her drawings until the scribbles fight back, pulling the girls into Pencilvania, a world where each of Zora's creations lives. Most of her now-animated drawings welcome her--except for one scribbled-out horse who kidnaps Frankie. Guided by a seven-legged horse, the Zoracle (a composite of her early self-portraits), and other charming creations, Zora sets out to rescue Frankie and rediscover the wellspring of creativity that forms her mother's legacy. Presumed White, the humans are well rounded and believable. Pencilvania's inhabitants, conceived with humorous, metafictional whimsy, are enlivened with copious, inventive illustrations. A vibrant celebration of art's power to console and heal. (Fiction. 8-12)

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October 1, 2021
Grades 4-6 The exciting "Voom" that young, compulsive artist Zora felt with a pencil or crayon in her hand vanishes after her beloved single mom dies from leukemia, replaced by such a profound, savage desire to scribble over all her sheets of saved artwork that she and her little sister, Frankie, actually fall into them. As depicted in Moore's expressionistic illustrations, the strange, patchwork metaverse of Pencilvania is populated by all the figures Zora has ever drawn or painted, from blobby little preschool "Eeeps" to horses, hamsters in pajamas, and images of her mom as both superhero and cancer patient. When a menacing horse named Viscardi, who is out to scribble over everything, snatches Frankie away to his Lair of Despair, Zora sets off to the rescue. Each contact with a Pencilvania resident brings a particular (and usually happy) memory of its creation into sharp focus, propelling the adventure and bringing a perspective that quiets her raging grief. Readers fond of imaginary excursions to Oz, Dictionopolis, or like therapeutic locales will be "drawn" to this one.

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