Starred Review ALA Booklist (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Starred Review Upon a desolate Earth, an enclave of humans has established a society amid hostile surroundings, including a wyrmfield inhabited by subterranean monsters straight out of Tremors. A harsh caste system has landed orphaned 13-year-old Leandro and his little sister, Gabi, in the Pox (Pocatel's slum) with the other Cascabeles, who work the potato fields each day under the watchful eye of the Pocatelan guards. Longing for a better life, Leandro has planned an escape, but everything is ruined when he is arrested for stealing and sentenced to three years' exile. Curiously, it will only be his mind that is held captive loaded into a tiny piece of Old-World tech called a spark. The physician performing the procedure secretly offers Leandro a deal in which she will place his spark into a hummingbird drone if he will search for her missing daughter, who is also in drone form. He accepts, knowing he and Gabi can leave Pocatel should he succeed. The high-stakes adventure awaiting Hummingbird Leandro is enthralling and studded with surprises that spur the narrative onward. Beautiful, imaginative writing fills this dystopian sf novel. Though it exposes cruelty and corruption, it raises up storytelling, culture, and kindness as stronger yet, giving a satisfying nod to Higuera's Newbery Award winning The Last Cuentista (2021) in the process. A wondrous addition to any collection.

Starred Review for Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Thirteen-year-old Leandro Rivera and his 9-year-old sister, Gabi, brave the harsh reality of a segregated settlement in post-apocalyptic California.Spanish-speaking Cascabeles like Leandro are forced to work the fields to provide for elite English-speaking Pocatelans or risk exile and certain death in the desolate and dangerous monster-filled outside world. Descended from farmers who worked the land before the calamity that made everything barren, the orphaned siblings, who survive as pickpockets, face discrimination within the city's walls and are threatened with deadly punishment for even minor offenses. Leandro and Gabi hatch a plan to escape from their oppressors, live free in the wild, and return to the ways of their people. Their plans derail, however, when Leandro is banished for stealing after he covers for Gabi's impulsive theft of a strawberry. But Leandro's magical transformation leads to a breathtaking discovery that could transform the lives of everyone in Pocatel. In Leandro's hero's journey, alebrijes are brilliantly cast as animalistic machines from another era and saviors of the living. The story examines how people can build better societies from the ashes of unequal, oppressive, and corrupt ones. Softly rendered black-and-white illustrations evoke the terrors and wonders of a broken world through a child's eyes. Strong worldbuilding uses the familiar and the fantastic to prod readers to consider the story's parallels to real-world injustices and the ethics of power, storytelling, and greed.This heartfelt adventure signals hope for humanity, even in the aftermath of darkness. (map) (Dystopian. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)

Thirteen-year-old Leandro Rivera and his 9-year-old sister, Gabi, brave the harsh reality of a segregated settlement in post-apocalyptic California.Spanish-speaking Cascabeles like Leandro are forced to work the fields to provide for elite English-speaking Pocatelans or risk exile and certain death in the desolate and dangerous monster-filled outside world. Descended from farmers who worked the land before the calamity that made everything barren, the orphaned siblings, who survive as pickpockets, face discrimination within the city's walls and are threatened with deadly punishment for even minor offenses. Leandro and Gabi hatch a plan to escape from their oppressors, live free in the wild, and return to the ways of their people. Their plans derail, however, when Leandro is banished for stealing after he covers for Gabi's impulsive theft of a strawberry. But Leandro's magical transformation leads to a breathtaking discovery that could transform the lives of everyone in Pocatel. In Leandro's hero's journey, alebrijes are brilliantly cast as animalistic machines from another era and saviors of the living. The story examines how people can build better societies from the ashes of unequal, oppressive, and corrupt ones. Softly rendered black-and-white illustrations evoke the terrors and wonders of a broken world through a child's eyes. Strong worldbuilding uses the familiar and the fantastic to prod readers to consider the story's parallels to real-world injustices and the ethics of power, storytelling, and greed.This heartfelt adventure signals hope for humanity, even in the aftermath of darkness. (map) (Dystopian. 10-14)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

An orphaned pickpocket must inhabit the body of a hummingbird drone in Newbery Medalist Higuera’s deeply humane postapocalyptic novel set in the distant future. Since arriving in Pocatel, a walled city with a harsh climate and scant resources, 13-year-old Leandro Rivera and his nine-year-old sister Gabi endure a life of arduous physical labor and must frequently engage in petty theft to survive. As Cascabeles, the Latinx-coded descendants of workers from the San Joaquin Valley, Leandro and Gabi must at all times abide by the oppressive Pocatelan Regime’s laws—or else face banishment as well as the deadly wyrms that lurk outside the city. When Gabi is caught stealing a strawberry just before a planned escape, Leandro sacrifices himself in her place. Upon meeting his captors, though, he is offered a reprieve in the form of a task: occupy a piece of tech thought lost to time and find a missing person beyond the city’s borders. Steeped in folkloric ambience and employing delicate character work, this stellar speculative narrative explores themes of identity across circumstance, centering an adolescent without structural power working to protect family and community. Occasional b&w interiors from Álvarez enrich the narrative. Ages 10–14. Agent: Allison Remcheck, Stimola Literary. (Oct.)