Fantastic Elements Research Articles

Age of “Shōjo”: The Emergence, Evolution, and Power of Japanese Girls’ Magazine Fiction by Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase

Reviewed by: Age of “Shōjo”: The Emergence, Evolution, and Power of Japanese Girls’ Magazine Fiction by Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase Michiko Suzuki Age of “Shōjo”: The Emergence, Evolution, and Power of Japanese Girls’ Magazine Fiction. By Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase. SUNY Press, 2019. 224 pages. Hardcover, $95.00; softcover, $32.95. Since the 1990s, Japanese- and English-language scholarship on shōjo shōsetsu (girls’ fiction) and shōjo zasshi (girls’ magazines) has helped enrich our understanding of modern Japanese literature, history, and popular culture. Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase’s monograph Age of “Shōjo” adds to this body of work, further exploring the concept of the shōjo (“adolescent girl,” p. xii) and fiction associated with girls’ magazines. Broadly speaking, Dollase’s significant contribution to the field is the presentation of a girls’ fiction genealogy from the Meiji period to the 1990s. This substantial undertaking proposes new ideas for what can be considered shōjo shōsetsu, creating a unique through line for understanding the genre while reframing a number of perspectives within shōjo studies. Chapter 1 discusses the first Japanese translation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868), Shōfujin (Little Ladies; 1906), a significantly adapted work that promotes the sanctioned Meiji ideology of the “Good Wife, Wise Mother” (ryōsai kenbo). Despite its adherence to mainstream values, Dollase argues, Shōfujin marks the beginning of girls’ fiction in Japan as it introduces to readers Josephine/Jo Marsh (called Shindō Takayo/Takashi in the Japanese version), an ambitious young woman who fulfills her goal of becoming a writer. By choosing this work as the original shōjo shōsetsu, Dollase takes a different approach from studies that locate the beginnings of the genre in the stories for girls [End Page 215] published in Shōnen sekai (Boys’ World) magazine, founded in 1895. Literary scholar Kume Yoriko has shown that girl-targeted narratives began to be published in this magazine as girls came to be seen as separate entities requiring different narratives from boys. According to Kume, Mizu no yukue (Where the Water Goes; 1897) by Tanaka Yūkaze was the first story specifically labeled shōjo shōsetsu. Such early stories for girls focused on moral lessons, indicated ideal girl behavior, or, in the case of Mizu no yukue, dramatized girlhood suffering brought about by declining family fortunes.1 Although Dollase does not discuss this particular work, she does briefly acknowledge the role of Shōnen sekai in her introduction (p. xii), noting that Kume identifies the stories published in this journal by Wakamatsu Shizuko (1864–1896), famous for translating Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy, as precursors to later forms of the girls’ fiction genre. Kume describes Wakamatsu’s stories as combining romantic and fantastic elements with didacticism. Dollase is clearly cognizant of such lineages of shōjo shōsetsu that begin with Shōnen sekai, but she creates a different genealogy. Although her study does not feature Japanese translations of Western texts except in this first chapter, her choice of Little Women as an Ur-text, “one of the seeds from which the entire history of Japanese shōjo fiction grew” (p. xv), underscores the influence of Western works in the development of the genre. Dollase also emphasizes the concept of shōjo authorship as an important part of her framework for understanding shōjo fiction. In Little Women, the young protagonist Jo (or Takashi) writes a short story that is published in a newspaper. Dollase points out that many prominent authors of Japanese girls’ fiction, especially in the prewar period, likewise began to write when they were girls and established themselves through girls’ magazines. The next several chapters pursue this line of thought. Chapter 2 discusses the early influential girls’ magazine Shōjo sekai (Girls’ World; 1906–1931) and its role in creating girl communities. Chapters 3 and 4 explore works by the authors who emerged from such reader-writer communities: chapter 3 examines Hana monogatari (Flower Tales; 1916–1924) by Yoshiya Nobuko (1896–1973), usually considered the definitive example of shōjo narrative, alongside works by Kitagawa Chiyo (1894–1965), while chapter 4 analyzes two semiautobiographical works, Yaneura no nishojo (Two Virgins...

Blood in the Water: Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Bayou Magic as Children’s Petrofiction

Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Bayou Magic (2015), written in the wake of the 2010 BP oil spill, deliberates the special problem of talking to children about oil. How does one tackle the subject of oil when addressing young people? How are children enabled to participate in discourses on petroleum? The novel also reveals a dilemma: the resource that we associate with comfort and progress actually contaminates, wounds, and lays waste to natural and human ecosystems. Caught in the mucky conundrum of oil, Bayou Magic reveals the challenges of talking to children about oil and oil catastrophes. In striving to meet the expectation that children’s fiction should offer a hopeful, if not happy, ending, Bayou Magic resorts to a resolution that “contains” the oil spill but sidesteps the problem of our persisting dependence on oil. But the novel’s allusion to the African deity Mami Wata is significant, as the figure connects the oppression of Black peoples to the exploitation of natural resources. As such, the novel uses fantastical elements not to imply that only something magical or divine can save us from disaster; rather, it signals that projects of environmental justice require openness to and embrace of radically imaginative solutions.

Sinthomosexuality and the Fantasy of Travel in The Time Machine

Sinthomosexuality and the Fantasy of Travel in The Time Machine Dan Abitz H.G. Wells begins the preface to Seven Famous Novels (1934) by drawing a distinct line between his "fantastic stories" and the pioneering science fiction of Jules Verne. "As a matter of fact," reflects Wells on the comparison, "there is no literary resemblance between the anticipatory inventions of the great Frenchman and these fantasies" (vii). Wells reiterates, "They are all fantasies; they do not aim to project a serious possibility; they aim indeed only at the same amount of conviction as one gets in a good gripping dream" (vii). Though they may be fantasies, they are also "appeals for human sympathy quite as much as any 'sympathetic' novel" (vii). For Wells, the fantastic element of any of his novels is a "magic trick," an "impossible hypothesis" in need of domestication, a smokescreen "used only to throw up and intensify our natural reactions of wonder fear or perplexity," in order that the vastly more important "interest of looking at human feelings and human ways" from a new angle can indeed elicit a touch of "human sympathy" from his readers (viii). Time travel is the "impossible hypothesis" at the center of Wells' first major piece of fiction The Time Machine (1895). Though Wells regards The Time Machine as "a little bit stiff about the fourth dimension," he still believes it to be "quite as philosophical and polemical and critical of life and so forth" as his later, more mature work (vii, ix). The "rigid four-dimensional space time framework" bandied about by Wells and his school chums occurred to the young author as a magic trick to be used for "a glimpse of the future that ran counter to the placid assumption of that time that Evolution was a pro-human force making things better and better for mankind" (ix). In that way, The Time Machine, like The War of the Worlds (1898), was an "assault on human self-satisfaction" (ix).1 Though this seems to run counter to the sympathy at the heart of his fantastic stories, implicit to his depiction is Wells' desire to look from new angles at "human feelings and human ways." In particular, The Time Machine critiques the placid assumptions of the fin-de-siècle in order to unveil myopic and vain Victorian presumptions about human progress and planetary dominance. Philosophical, polemical, critical of life, and running counter to placid assumptions about the future—much the same could be said about Lee Edelman's No Future (2004). Edelman's own reflection on No Future in "Learning Nothing: Bad Education" (2017) [End Page 135] sounds not dissimilar from Wells' thoughts on The Time Machine: "No Future argued that social relations that imagine an end to their structural antagonism in a tomorrow perpetually deferred invoke the future as guarantee of meaning's realization (124). Here, the "placid assumption" in question is not that Darwinian Evolution will continue to provide an ever-better future for mankind but that the future will inevitably bring about the realization of the Symbolic's promised meaning. The Symbolic's perpetually deferred promise of totalization takes, in effect, a linear view of social, evolutionary, moral, political, and technological progress that happens for the benefit of humanity. Edelman is not concerned with Darwinian Evolution per se, but he certainly takes aim, as did Wells, at those futural fantasies that work to reaffirm and reproduce dominant ideological formations. Both Wells and Edelman critique futures that they view as nothing more than reproductions of inherently conservative social fantasies. Wells and Edelman make these critiques through their own fantasies about futurity (or the lack thereof). While Wells uses time travel as the fantastic element to produce an increasingly inhuman future for his novel's protagonist to explore, Edelman's sinthomosexual is a theoretical-fantastical figure that he uses to explore the impossibility of breaking with our increasingly inhumane present. More specifically, Wells' Time Traveler is, like Ebenezer Scrooge and Silas Marner in No Future, the Victorian sinthomosexual; he is the figure that Edelman fantasizes "would assert itself instead against futurity, against its propagation, insofar as it would designate an impasse in the passage...

От взрослого рассказа к детской сказке: на примере рассказа Ф. М. Достоевского «Мальчик у Христа на елке»

The article deals with some methodological, textual and critical-pedagogical issues related to the transformation of a story for adults into a fairy-tale for children. Dostoevsky’s story “The beggar boy at Christ’s Christmas tree” is a particularly significant example that allows to trace, on one hand, the attitude of Russian pedagogical criticism to the fantastic elements in the last quarter of 19 th century, and on the other, the variability of social forces affecting the entry of a work into children’s literary canon. The story was first published in January issue of Diary of a Writer (1876), and in the following year was included in the collection Thirty Best New Tales by V. P. Avenarius, and in 1882 in the collection Exemplary Russian Tales for Children. In the 1880s and 1890s, the story appeared in various children’s publications, provoking controversial reactions among pedagogical critics and in institutions responsible f

ПОЛИТИЧЕСКАЯ ЭКСТРАВАГАНЦА КАК ДРАМАТИЧЕСКИЙ ЖАНР (на материале пьес Бернарда Шоу)

The paper deals with the semantic and structural specificity of political extravaganza as a genre of dramaturgy. The history of this literary and dramatic kind and also its scantily explored genetic connection with the dramatic pamphlet, which arose in the 18th-century English theatre, are briefly retraced. Its artistic peculiarity is investigated by using material from several plays of Bernard Shaw, which were written from the 1920s–1930s (The Apple Cart, Too True to be Good, Geneva, On the Rocks). The genre definition was used by the playwright for the first time as a subtitle to the play The Apple Cart, the first performance of it took place in Warsaw in 1929; the extravaganza was staged by Arnold Szyfman at the “Teatr Polski”. Special attention is paid in the article to such features of political extravaganza, as paradox, the grotesque and eccentricity, which become apparent at some levels of dramatic text: in the linguo-stylistic originality of the tirades and dialogues, as well as in the extensive stage directions and sometimes in the titles, in the characters of personages, in construction of the plots and in the composition of the plays. Of primary interest is also the eccentric treatment of the artistic time in the plays based on the historical personalities or episodes, and in the introduction of fantastical elements to the dramatic action. The essential role of the concentrated eccentricity in the sharpening and the emphasized topicalization of political satire is also discussed in the paper.

A Study on Fantastic Elements in Early-year Short Stories by Park Taewon

A Study on Fantastic Elements in Early-year Short Stories by Park Taewon

W. Morris’s tradition in J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy

This article offers a comprehensive review of W. Morris influence on the epic fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien. The purpose of the research is to reflect how Morris tradition influenced the development of Tolkiens fantastic prose - which later formed a separate subgenre of epic fantasy - and the whole fantasy genre. The objectives of the study include tracing the history of the development of fantastic element in literature - which served as a basis for the works of both authors - and finding poetological similarities and differences between W. Morris and J.R.R. Tolkien. The comparative study is based on the works of V. Gopman and K. Massey as well as on the original writings of Morris and Tolkien. The result of the study is the justification for W. Morris as the natural literary precursor of Tolkien. Based on the influence and partial borrowing of Morris imagery and motifs, Tolkin develops the theoretical foundation for the genre of magical fairy tale, which will later be called fantasy.

La cara oculta de la realidad: elementos fantásticos en La princesa y el granuja de Benito Pérez Galdós

Este artículo analiza el funcionamiento de los elementos fantásticos en «La princesa y el granuja» de Benito Pérez Galdós. Para ello, se parte de una revisión del concepto de lo fantástico en el relato breve galdosiano, lo que permite así cuestionar el tradicional menosprecio de la crítica a esta parte de la producción del canario. Desde una concepción amplia de realismo, Galdós ensayará en el cuento estrategias narrativas y temáticas de la literatura fantástica decimonónica. En la práctica, ello se cifrará en la construcción de diversas esferas semióticas que, dudando de la mímesis, anticipan el cuestionamiento de la realidad social de sus novelas. Palabras clave: Benito Pérez Galdós, literatura fantástica, realismo literario, cuento fantástico.

THE MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF A HORSE IN THE EPOS OF HEROES

Compared to other genres of the epic, in the heroic epic we see one of the most perfect images of the horse, which has reached a high artistic level. This is due to the fact that in the archaic epic the predominance of fantastic elements, mythical motives, the consciousness of an immature child prevents him from creating a full-fledged image of a horse, the main theme of the lyric epic. which prevented the formation On the other hand, historical poetry is usually smaller in size than epic, which does not allow portraying tulpar in a variety of forms. Therefore, we can say that the image of the horse in the Kazakh epic, which is depicted in the most comprehensive, deep and diverse character, is formed mainly in the heroic epic. This was due to the fact that tulpar are usually portrayed with heroism, courage, battles with the enemy. In this regard, the article discusses the main features of the image of a horse in the epic.

Fantastische Technik im Mittelalter? Zu (Glücks-)Rädern in zwei mittelhochdeutschen Artusromanen

Recent works in the field of German medieval literature argue that the category of ›the fantastic‹ needs to be defined in demarcation to the medieval category of ›the marvelous‹, and, thus, the focus of text analyses should lay on forms and functions of ›fear/fright‹. Following up on this concept, the article analyses the motif of the wheel (of fortune) in two Middle High German Arthurian verse novels and asks whether it can be considered to be a fantastic element. It is pointed out that the (evil) marvelous is integrated into a concrete and dualis-tic religious meaning where it is linked to existential fear. By contrast, the fan-tastic keeps unnatural and strange things unexplained and enigmatic. Here, fright is realized in a more congealed, pictorial way and stays in the back-ground whereby the occurrences seem to be left in fantastic ambiguity and in-explicability. Therefore, valid systems of classification are subverted.Publisher's note: This article was originally published as part of issue 8.1. This has been updated to note that this article is part of issue 7.2.

DEMÔNIOS DE ALUÍSIO AZEVEDO: HORROR E FILOSOFIA

O objetivo do presente trabalho consiste em compreender a relação entre os elementos gótico, fantástico e naturalista no conto Demônios, de Aluísio Azevedo, no qual retrata-se a trajetória do narrador/ personagem, no Rio de Janeiro permeado pela escuridão e silêncio, ambientação notadamente marcada por lama, lodo e pessoas mortas. Além disso, busca-se apontar a posição do conto no contexto da literatura brasileira do final do século XIX. Para tanto, no primeiro momento, busca-se inserir o conto Demônios no contexto literário brasileiro do século XIX com o objetivo de destacar sua excepcionalidade. Em seguida, aborda-se como os elementos românticos, góticos e fantástico são construídos visando reforçar as principais tópicas do Naturalismo. Por fim, propõe-se uma interpretação alternativa às principais existentes no texto – como a exaltação do amor romântico e do escapismo –, as quais tornam Demônios como marginal em relação à obra caracterizada como canônica, além da crítica literária tomar sua construção como “falha de composição”, o que atrapalha a caracterização de seu naturalismo. A presente pesquisa conclui que os aspectos românticos não são subterfúgios estéticos ou falhas de composição, mas sim recursos estético-literários utilizados para ressaltar posições filosófico-literárias do próprio naturalismo.

La post-fantasy: il ciclo letterario Inquisitore Eymerich di Valerio Evangelisti come una realizzazione dell’elemento fantastico tramite la narrazione postmoderna

This article examines the literary series of Inquisitore Eymerich by Valerio Evangelisti, a variegated macronarrative, which, resisting generic classification, introduces innovation to the panorama of contemporary Italian fantasy. Departing from the analysis of the salient features of the series such as intertextuality, hybridization, storiographic metafiction, and transfictionality, the article examines closely the areas of postmodern narration and inquires into the role of the fantastic element in Italian literature. Evangelisti makes the most of postmodern narrative strategies and of fantasy’s ability to penetrate various media in order to provide a tool of critical reflection on human history with an emphasis on the phenomenology of power. By interweaving different literary genres and inviting readers to produce their own interpretations in form of fan fiction, Evangelisti creates a new type of committed narrative, post-fantasy, which presents a new conception of postmodern narrative, one that overcomes the barrier between the literary fiction and the genre fiction.

Preschool children’s perceptions on human–environment relationship: follow-up research

ABSTRACT In the current study, we focus on how the early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) program develops the perceptions of preschool children about the human–environment relationship. The sample of the study consisted of preschoolers aged 60–66 months in Ankara, Turkey. The data were collected through the drawings of children on the topic of ‘human–environment’ and interviews on drawings obtained before and after the program. The findings revealed that children perceive their environment as a peaceful and gentle place. Furthermore, children conceptualized the environment through unusual and fantastic elements and they described the environment through secondary sources. There was a shift in descriptions in the post- and follow-up drawings including proposing recycling as a way of reconstructing the human–environment relationship, with making connections between global issues. In parallel to post findings, follow-up drawings gained after 10-month of the implementation highlights children’s own solutions for a sustainable future.

The Atom, the Alien, and Cosmographies of the Anthropocene

Chingiz Aitmatov’s The Day Lasts Longer than a Hundred Years (I dol’she veka dlitsia den’), published in 1980, has long been read in terms of its affiliations with socialist realism as well as its radical departures into the realms of science fiction and folklore, resulting in a range of debates about the genre of the novel and the political allegories encoded in its various storylines. This essay returns to the fantastic elements that contaminate Aitmatov’s late-Soviet text not as a historiography of the author’s present, as Fredric Jameson would put it, but as an experiment in composing parabolas of the Anthropocene. Both as a geometric figure and as a fugitive cosmopolitics, parabolas inscribe a novel spacetime in which deep histories of colonial violence and dislocation intersect with futuristic arcs of planetary devastation, rewriting the Russian and Soviet empire’s Central Asian periphery into a generative epicenter of ecological storytelling.

Rainbow Valley as Embodied Heaven: Initial Explorations into L.M. Montgomery's Spirituality in Fiction

Intriguingly, L.M. Montgomery’s generally realistic fiction is filled with fantastic elements. This article argues that by following Montgomery into the heavenly fairyland of Rainbow Valley, readers can discern a joyful, creative, imaginative, and integrated image of spiritual life in the conversations, the characters, and the magic valley itself.

Hikmet Temel Akarsu’nun Çocuğa Yönelik Eserlerindeki Fantastik Karakterlerin Kişilik Özelliklerinin Analizi

Fantastic literature, which is also known as escape literature, stands out as a type of literature preferred by the authors with the unlimited imagination and self-expression opportunities it provides to its narrator. Especially in the recent period, the adaptation of some fantastic works to the cinema and the fact that these films have reached a high number of viewers have enabled the reader to show interest to the works that source them. This situation indirectly had a positive effect on other fantastic literature works. The fact that the works carrying such fantastic elements are interesting for children and young people has been seen as an educational opportunity and these works have also been used for educational purposes. In Hikmet Temel Akarsu's works aimed at children, it is seen that fantastic elements are used for educational purposes. The aim of this study is to determine the personality characteristics of the fantastic characters in Hikmet Temel Akarsu's works aimed at the child. In the research process, descriptive analysis method was used. The personality characteristics of the fantastic characters in the author's works directed towards the child were determined as environmentalism, benevolence and accuracy.

Convergence and the Beast: A Canonical Crossover Affair

In the digital age it has become almost impossible to view children’s texts outside the context of the new media. This study will focus on three works of children’s fiction, The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander/J.K. Rowling; and their respective adaptations, Peter Rabbit, Where the Wild Things Are, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The article draws on contemporary theories of adaptation and the media, particularly the theory of ‘convergence’ and its impact on meaning-making in the production and reception of literary texts. It will take into account the cross-media and transmedia approach to analysing children’s texts, as well as the crossover effect of adapting children’s books into films. Particular attention is paid to the adaptation of still into moving imagery and its shifts in focalisation, providing evidence that the new media have made children’s books accessible to a variety of audiences. Such examples display the contemporary complexity of children’s storytelling and culture within and beyond the canon. Owing to the developments in digital media and technologies, which enable the realistic depiction of complex visual and fantastic elements that are characteristic of children’s texts, in the new millennium children’s literature has indeed become ‘everyone’s business’.

Convergence and the Beast: A Canonical Crossover Affair

In the digital age it has become almost impossible to view children’s texts outside the context of the new media. This study will focus on three works of children’s fiction, The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander/J.K. Rowling; and their respective adaptations, Peter Rabbit, Where the Wild Things Are, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The article draws on contemporary theories of adaptation and the media, particularly the theory of ‘convergence’ and its impact on meaning-making in the production and reception of literary texts. It will take into account the cross-media and transmedia approach to analysing children’s texts, as well as the crossover effect of adapting children’s books into films. Particular attention is paid to the adaptation of still into moving imagery and its shifts in focalisation, providing evidence that the new media have made children’s books accessible to a variety of audiences. Such examples display the contemporary complexity of children’s storytelling and culture within and beyond the canon. Owing to the developments in digital media and technologies, which enable the realistic depiction of complex visual and fantastic elements that are characteristic of children’s texts, in the new millennium children’s literature has indeed become ‘everyone’s business’.

ТЕКСТИ ФАНТАСТИЧНОГО ЗМІСТУ: МОДУСНО-МОДАЛЬНІ АСПЕКТИ ТИПОЛОГІЇ

У статті з використанням понять модусу й модальності представлена спроба прагматичної типології текстів, у яких наявний елемент фантастичного, шляхом врахування низки критеріїв (наявності чи відсутності авторства; вживання фантастичного як прийому або ж як жанротвірного чинника (концепту); «художності» чи «не художності» зображення текстової історії; урахування чинників модусно-модального характеру. Перспективи семантико-прагматичного підходу до вивчення текстів фантастичного змісту вбачаємо в лінгвальному уточненні, а за можливості й «вхоплені» чіткою дефініцією сутності феномену фантастичного, в обґрунтуванні й деталізації чинників, що диференціюють ці тексти, зокрема чинників модусно-модального характеру. Ключові слова: фантастичний текст, текстовий модус, метатекстовий модус, текстова модальність, тексти-ченнелінги.

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow

Reviewed by: A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow Fiona Hartley-Kroeger A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow In folklore and fiction, monsters represent very real human anxieties and fears, and the supernatural is often a way of talking about painful subjects. Morrow’s YA debut deftly twines myth and folklore with realism, creating a compelling narrative in which the fantastical elements, drawn from a range of folkloric and mythological traditions, amplify contemporary issues of gender, race, and power that Black women and girls face in their everyday lives. The story unfolds through alternating first-person narration by Tavia and Effie, who live in a Portland, Oregon much like ours—but in a world where sprites wreak mischief, elokos charm all and sundry, and gargoyles come and go as they please. The girls are sisters in all but blood; their mutual love and individual journeys of identity are the twin poles around which the action revolves. Tavia is a siren, with a voice that can command and compel listeners with her siren calls. Sirens’ voices are considered threats to be suppressed and controlled, especially since sirens are now exclusively Black women in a world that already demonizes them in multiple ways. “Now that it’s just us, the romance is dead,” remarks Tavia. “Instead of inspiring songs and stories, now our calls inspire defensive anger. Our power’s not enchanting or endearing anymore; it offends.” While her parents would prefer that Tavia suppress her power, she’s seeking out her grandmother’s spirit to learn more about her voice and how to use it. Effie’s journey is about understanding who and what she is. Haunted by a traumatic incident in her past, in which a group of childhood friends were turned to stone, Effie finds solace in swimming and performing as Euphemia the Mer at the local Renaissance Faire. Unanswered questions about her parents, the mysterious Hidden Scales tent at the Ren Faire, and literal and metaphorical discomfort in her own skin drive her to seek answers from the reticent grandparents who raised her after her mother’s death and sent her to live with Tavia’s family. This magical realist world has as much realism as magic: the murder of a Black woman rumored to be a siren, police violence at a protest, and the self-outing of a popular YouTube star as a siren bring urgency to the girls’ need to answer questions about who they are and how their voices can empower as well as endanger them. Friend and frenemy dynamics and boy troubles ring true alongside the mystery of the hunky gargoyle who perches on the girls’ roof. Morrow skillfully balances acerbic social commentary and relatable teen angst with understated, heart-pounding tension: for instance, faux-woke behavior from friends and teachers receives the disdain it deserves, while a “random” police stop incident is utterly [End Page 419] harrowing; currents of racism and misogyny are palpable beneath a surface veneer of civility that threatens to erupt into violence at any moment. Though it’s unflinching in its depiction of the trauma of silencing and disempowerment, the novel is far from a grimdark misery fest. It offers supportive versions of community in Tavia and Effie’s sisterhood, their complicated but loving families, Tavia’s gospel choir that lets her use her voice safely, and Effie’s Ren Faire home where performing frees her to be another version of herself. Morrow’s prose flows easily between the sisters, giving each her own voice and finding magic in self-knowledge as well as in the fantastic. There’s plenty here to interest a broad audience: this is a must-read for readers committed to a nuanced understanding of racial (in)justice and for fans of Nalo Hopkinson and Nnedi Okorafor. (See p. 440 for publication information.) Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois