The Spirit of Cattail County

March 1, 2018

Gr 4-6-A moving quest for comfort, understanding, and acceptance set in the marshes of Florida. Sparrow is not like other children, she has the gift, or curse, of seeing spirits. After her mother passes from illness, Sparrow asks her best friend-a ghost no one else can see-to send a message to her mom. Sparrow is in need of friends, family, and everything else she seems to lack. Her challenges throughout the book will resonate with pre-teens and those who have ever lost a loved one or felt they were completely alone. The author also delves deep into the roots of life in Florida, with descriptive sensory details throughout the story. Readers can feel the mud squish beneath their feet as characters walk through the marshes, and smell the salt in the air as the wind blows. VERDICT A melancholy, but ultimately uplifting, story about overcoming sorrow and finding one's place in the world. Hand this to readers who crave sad stories.-Megan Honeycutt, University of West Georgia

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2018
The difference between wanting and needing can be as slight as the breath off a midnight swamp or as vast as a torrent of floodwater.Piontek weaves a heartbreaking tale of loss infused with the nearly suffocating weight of longing, need, and absence. The death of Mama leaves young Sparrow in the care of tall, thin, and emotionally brittle Auntie Geraldine. Sparrow has never known her father, and in her small Florida town where her home sat pressed against the Everglades, rumor was the dark-haired girl was the spawn of the swamp itself. Long as Mama lived, Sparrow accepted her outsider status. With Mama gone, Sparrow finds herself engulfed in a grief as stifling as summer humidity. Sparrow's only companion is the ghostly Boy who has been part of her life as long as she can remember, until at last she begins to make some living friends. Piontek spins a gothic ghost tale, delivering it in a lyrical narrative that threatens to overwhelm readers as sure as a blanket of Florida summer heat. Sparrow and her friends are white, not unusual in Beulah, Florida, whose social stratifications include unspoken segregation.Even though the ending comes too fast and too tidily after so much soul-stirring grief, the story features some lovely writing, and it's full of characters who linger like apparitions. (Fantasy. 10-14)

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2018
Grades 4-7 For Sparrow Dalton, life in swampy, small-town Beulah has never been easy. Her mama recently passed away; she never knew her daddy; and sometimes, the town buzzes with rumors she must be the daughter of the swamp itself. To make matters worse, Sparrow also sees spirits. One of them, the Boy, a cherub-faced trickster, has skulked by her side for as long as she can remember. Sparrow's never told a soul about the Boy, but if she wants to make her mama a spirit like him, she'll require help, and she finds that?and more?in town outcasts Maeve and Johnny Casto, as well as traveling child fortune-teller Elena. But the Boy needs help, too, and the gang soon stumbles into a century's worth of scathing secrets. With gorgeous prose, an eerie historical undercurrent, and a lush, larger-than-life Florida backdrop, Piontek not only delivers a taut exploration of fractured small-town dynamics, but an entrancing, compulsively readable mystery. Sensitive readers with a yen for all things supernatural will hungrily sleuth their way through this atmospheric debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)