Starred Review Before nine-year-old Nina's great-great grandmother Rosita passes, she dictates a mysterious story in Lipan (partly lost in translation) about a fish girl in a well, which Nina is unable to forget as she grows into her teens. Meanwhile, in the Reflecting World (the land of spirits and monsters), Oli cottonmouth snake boy venturing out into the world alone for the first time, making enemies with other animal people but also friends in what seems like equal measure. What Nina and Oli don't know is that their lives are about to converge when Oli learns his toad friend, Ami, is dying. His species is on the verge of extinction on Earth (which is inextricably linked to their world) due to, no surprise, environmental destruction caused by humans. While on Earth, Oli and his friends help Nina as her world becomes more precarious, answering the questions she has for so long wondered about. Little Badger's sophomore novel in the manner of traditional Lipan Apache storytelling is just as unique and enchanting as Elatsoe (2020), and it's sure to garner her an even broader readership. Nina's third-person perspective is beautifully ruminative compared to Oli's faster first-person point of view, but it's the writing on the whole that resonates most, singing like poetry with lyrical, literary wisdom. Magical, stunning, and wholly original.

A 16-year-old Lipan Apache girl from Texas and a cottonmouth person from the spirit world connect when both need help.When Nina was 9, her Great-Great-Grandmother Rosita told her a story in Spanish and Lipan Apache. Using dictionaries to painstakingly make sense of the garbled transcription app results, Nina uncovers a mysterious story about Rosita's sighting of a fish girl in her well, long after the joined era when animal people still lived on Earth. Nina uploads her musings about her family's stories to the St0ryte11er video platform. In the Reflecting World, innocent Oli, a cottonmouth snake person, reluctantly leaves home, settling down and befriending ancient toad Ami, two coyote sisters, and a hawk. Animal people can shift between their true and false (humanoid) forms and are able to visit Earth; Nina's and Oli's lives intertwine when he and his friends travel to Texas seeking help after learning that Ami is dying because the earthly population of his toad species faces extinction due to human environmental destruction. They in turn help Nina with the suspicious man lurking near her Grandma's home, an impending tornado, and her Grandma's unexplained illness whenever she leaves her land. Little Badger (Lipan Apache) alternates between two distinct, well-realized voices-Nina's third-person and Oli's first-person perspectives-highlighting critical issues of language revitalization and climate change. The story leads readers through two richly constructed worlds using a style that evokes the timeless feeling of listening to traditional oral storytelling.A coming-of-age story that beautifully combines tradition and technology for modern audiences. (Fantasy. 12-18)

This original and suspenseful fantasy explores perceptions and understandings of space, time, identity, environmentalism, communication, and "the rightness of home." Nina, a human, is determined to translate a haunting Spanish and Lipan Apache oral story passed down by her late great-great-grandmother. Oli, a cottonmouth snake and animal person from the "world of spirits of monsters," will do anything to save his toad friend Ami, who has become ill because his Earth equivalent species is near extinction. Nina's and Oli's worlds are connected; a portal between them has something to do with a "pseudosun" in Oli's Reflecting World and temperature and magnetic anomalies on Nina's family land. The two characters eventually unite and together deal with a trickster mockingbird; an untrustworthy internet influencer; severe weather; and the threat of violent, cultish followers of a power-hungry "King" (a.k.a. "the Nightmare") who aims to be the only immortal left on Earth. They also use magic and learn why Nina's grandmother's health mysteriously declines whenever she leaves the family's land. Chapters alternate in voice and perspective, with the characters' worlds skillfully delineated and stories masterfully woven together. Modern dialogue, which offers further depth to characterization, intermingles with elements of traditional storytelling and family history, creating an imaginative and multilayered work of speculative fiction. Elisa Gall

A 16-year-old Lipan Apache girl from Texas and a cottonmouth person from the spirit world connect when both need help.When Nina was 9, her Great-Great-Grandmother Rosita told her a story in Spanish and Lipan Apache. Using dictionaries to painstakingly make sense of the garbled transcription app results, Nina uncovers a mysterious story about Rosita's sighting of a fish girl in her well, long after the joined era when animal people still lived on Earth. Nina uploads her musings about her family's stories to the St0ryte11er video platform. In the Reflecting World, innocent Oli, a cottonmouth snake person, reluctantly leaves home, settling down and befriending ancient toad Ami, two coyote sisters, and a hawk. Animal people can shift between their true and false (humanoid) forms and are able to visit Earth; Nina's and Oli's lives intertwine when he and his friends travel to Texas seeking help after learning that Ami is dying because the earthly population of his toad species faces extinction due to human environmental destruction. They in turn help Nina with the suspicious man lurking near her Grandma's home, an impending tornado, and her Grandma's unexplained illness whenever she leaves her land. Little Badger (Lipan Apache) alternates between two distinct, well-realized voices-Nina's third-person and Oli's first-person perspectives-highlighting critical issues of language revitalization and climate change. The story leads readers through two richly constructed worlds using a style that evokes the timeless feeling of listening to traditional oral storytelling.A coming-of-age story that beautifully combines tradition and technology for modern audiences. (Fantasy. 12-18)