There Flies the Witch by Mayonn Paasewe-Valchev

Abstract

Reviewed by: There Flies the Witch by Mayonn Paasewe-Valchev Fiona Hartley-Kroeger Paasewe-Valchev, Mayonn There Flies the Witch. Greenwillow, 2023 [224p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780062993649 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780062993663 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R* Gr. 4-7 Where winged old Yakaka goes, flying far and wide to mend injured lands and waters, there too goes Red, her foundling daughter, carried on Yakaka's back. The pair share a life full of love, if not of plenty, but Red's contentment is marred by a recurring nightmare, her inability to effect healing with storytelling the way Yakaka can, and a hunger to know about her past and be sure of her place in the world. A dangerous flight over the ocean leaves Red stranded on an island where she must make a new life with a kind but complicated mother-and-son duo, the island's only other inhabitants, until time and finally a terrible storm bring more than one revelation to the surface. The cadenced storyteller's voice and short, propulsive sentences render every moment of the deceptively simple plot urgently alive. A wealth of earthy, quotidian detail provides some needed distance from the roiling emotional dynamics; beneath an exquisitely poetic skin, the novel brims with tensions between abandonment and isolation, fault and forgiveness, empowerment and self-realization. As an aspiring storyteller whose efforts often seem to fall short, Red is eminently relatable to novice (and experienced) storytellers: her composition process, visualized on-page, is replete with crossed-out vocabulary choices and passionately reimagined realities. As she comes into her own, readers are given a well-crafted lesson on finding one's voice to protect one's home. The novel's repeated verbal patterns and ecological concerns make it a good partner for Stringfellow's A Comb of Wishes (BCCB 01/22), and the relationship between Red and Yakaka calls up the complicated affection shared by Luna and Xan in Barnhill's The Girl Who Drank the Moon (BCCB 09/16). This is absolutely not to be missed. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois