Lingering Echoes

December 15, 2018
The second in a planned trilogy that began with Bone's Gift (2018).It's now October 1942. Plenty of changes have come to seventh-grader Bone Phillips' life in the coal-camp town of Big Vein, Virginia: Uncle Henry died en route to the front; Daddy's still safe but also fighting; and some of Bone's friends no longer have to work in the mines. Her best friend, Will, mute since a week after his daddy died a decade ago, still goes below every day. When he discovers that a jelly jar left in his daddy's long-abandoned dinner bucket is stealing everyday sounds, Bone begins to believe the jar somehow stole Will's voice. How can she use her own gifts to get it back for him? Smibert's writing is as smooth and evocative as in the first volume, and her historical details ring true. Blue and gold stars appear in windows; the community engages in a scrap drive for metal to be melted into an anti-aircraft gun. Readers who come new to this story, however, are likely to be hopelessly lost, as there simply isn't enough clear background information given to carry them forward. The large cast of characters grows unwieldy, even for returning readers.Bone's Gift may have been better as a stand-alone; here's hoping Smibert pulls it out in Book 3. (Historical/paranormal fiction. 8-12)

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January 1, 2019
Grades 6-9 The second installment of Smibert's Ghosts of Ordinary Objects series (Bone's Gift?, 2018) finds Bone continuing to wrestle with the possibilities and limitations of her powers. Bone can see the history of objects she touches, and the things she sees tend to be troubling. The dark shadow of WWI still looms over the her Appalachian community, and WWII is currently taking lives left and right. Personal and community loss is also tied deeply to the mining trade, where most people have lost at least one loved one. Bone herself is still reeling from the trauma of losing her mom to illness, her dad to war, and her aunt's frightening and violent rejection of her. All of this darkness weighs heavily on the narrative, and the central mystery, which revolves around a glass jar that traps sound, is not strong enough to pull it up. As with the previous book, an evocative presentation of time and place is the real star. Fans of the first book will nevertheless enjoy returning to Bone's world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)