Zahrah the Windseeker (Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu) [#4]

[chomiji]

The tradition-minded people of the Ooni Kingdom have only distant legends of what it means to be born dada, as Zahrah was. Although her family love her, they don't really understand what it's like for the young girl to grow up with living vines twining in her hair, and some of her classmates are cruel. Only her best friend, Dari, appreciates her

Comments

[bookelfe]

I had basically the same reaction to Zahrah the Windseeker - enjoyed it but felt it skewed a little young - but I thought her sort-of-sequel The Shadow Speaker upped the ante considerably in terms of interest and complexity. To use your Carol Kendall comparison, if Zahrah the Windseeker is The Gammage Cup, The Shadow Speaker is closer to The Firelings.

(Uh, though I realize that analogy is only useful if you a.) have actually read The Firelings and b.) share my opinion that it is a much darker and more interesting book than The Gammage Cup, which are both probably not things I should assume!)

[chomiji]

Wow, I have not read The Firelings! What's it like?

[bookelfe]

It's awesome! It's basically a Gammage Cup pre-pre-prequel with similar themes, except clearly written for an older crowd in that instead of clear-cut Bad Guys That Must Be Defeated there is a lot of frightened people and a volcano and the threat of human sacrifice!

. . . and is also very definitely not written by a POC, so perhaps I should not go into a more extended discussion here. Uh. Anyway, my point in making The Shadow Speaker comparison is that the characters in that book are a lot more complex than in Zahrah and the quest story significantly less simple; for example, the most important relationship is between the protagonist and the woman who killed her father.

[sovay]

. . . and is also very definitely not written by a POC, so perhaps I should not go into a more extended discussion here.

I briefly and strongly second its reading.

[badgerbag]

Young adult actually means 9-13!

[chomiji]

Eeek, really? How can anyone think a 9- or 10-yr-old is any kind of adult?

So what do they call things like Twilight and the Justina Chen Headley books - the ones for the 13-16-yr-old set? That's what I had imagined YA was ... .

(I'm not sure how I have raised a daughter to be 17 years old without becoming aware of this, but somehow I missed it!)

[badgerbag]

I don't understand it myself but YA seems to be code for "book usually about older teenagers, for younger ones and tweens". Or, younger kids undergoing something borderline horrific.

LOL.

All *sorts* of 10 year olds read Twilight.

[smillaraaq]

Hrm, are you absolutely sure about that as a formal category? This online dictionary of library and information science terms says YA is aimed at adolescents, 12 to 18, which seems to be exactly in line with Wikipedia and any other references I can find actually specifying age ranges. Which isn't to say that younger tweens who are good readers aren't eagerly reading YA books a few years before they hit the target range -- I was certainly in those library stacks by 9 or 10 myself!; but the material actually aimed specifically at kids in the 8/9 - 12/13 range is apparently a subcategory of its own, middle grade books.

(Cho, you've got enough librarians on your f-list, I bet you could poke one of those gals for further clarification...)

[therck]

I think so, depending on the child. It's been a while since I read it, so I don't recall the complexity level of the prose and vocabulary, but I think the story would work. The dangers Zahrah runs into are things that she can deal with. Those threats will probably seem a lot scarier to a child than the did to me or to most other adult readers.

[lady_tigerfish]

I agree with this assessment, and would add that Zahrah is a wonderful protagonist for a little girl to look up to. The prose is not hard, and while the scary parts would admittedly seem a lot more scary to a young child than they would an adult, there's nothing worse here than any of the monsters in, say, Harry Potter--and the Harry Potter series gets considerably darker than this book ever does.

[badgerbag]

I think so too!

[rcloenen_ruiz]

Thanks for this review. I'm planning to get this one for my eldest son. I'll probably wait before gifting my best friend's daughter as she's only five years old.

[lady_ganesh]

This sounds pretty interesting!