Mai K. Nguyen

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Netgalley.)

-- 4.5 stars --

Anzu's family just moved to a new town, and she's having trouble making friends. Not that her old friends - who insisted on calling her "Anne" while mocking her "smelly" food - were all that great anyway. It's the last day of Obon, and her mom and brother Yuuta are decorating the house, but Anzu hasn't been able to get into the spirit of things since her obaachan died. Instead, Anzu goes for a walk in the show more woods behind her house - and unwittingly stumbles into Yomi, the land of the dead, while chasing a stray dog who snatched her grandmother's pendant right off her neck!

But this is no mere canine - Anzu's thief is the Gatekeeper of Yomi, and he might just be her only way out of the underworld. The Gatekeeper - who Anzu names Limbo - is hiding his own shameful secret: he no longer feels connected to Musuhi, the power flowing through the earth, hence his inability to fix the rift in the Marsh Gate that allowed Anzu through. And so many like her: Izanami, Queen of Yomi, imprisons the souls of stolen children in her Floating Garden. They are trapped forever, unable to journey to their next life, or visit with their families on Obon.

Can Anzu and Limbo fix the gate, free the trapped children, and get Anzu home before sunlight - at which point she'll be bound to Yomi and Izanami forever?

ANZU AND THE REAL OF DARKNESS is such a delightful and touching story. Nguyen - who claims both Japanese and Vietnamese heritage - incorporated elements of Shintoism and Buddhism into Anzu's world. The result is absolutely enthralling. I especially loved the Gatekeeper (and his genesis: Limbo is a real pup!); the goddess Akkorokamui and her apprentice, Rakko Huci; the crafty Nurikabe; and of course the Night Market. The scenes with Anzu and her obaachan reduced me to tears, as did Limbo's resurrection.

ANZU AND THE REAL OF DARKNESS is a lovely story about being true to yourself; the importance of finding your people; and continuing to love and honor those who have passed on. show less

Received via NetGalley for review

A gorgeous and touching little story filled with beautiful and evocative artwork. Nguyen truly understand the complex emotions that come with being a family and after a great loss, and the struggle to find your way back to who you were after tragedy.

While nothing is explicitly spelled out, it's still very clear what happened to Willow's mother and how her family re-formed afterwards and how Willow struggled with that, which is wonderful. Doing so in this way show more really allows for the story to show that Willow's grief is ever-present but not necessarily an anchor weighing her down and that it's possible for her to move forward.

Truly a wonderful story and a pleasure to read. show less

Very sweet illustrations, and a book that's all about feelings -- how they can be monsters than make you feel isolated and angry and hurtful to others, but they are also an important part of us. Two kids wandering in the woods -- 1 has lost her mother, 1 is a dryad from a large family who's run away. Lots of sweetness, good subject, but ultimately the message was kind of confusing, because they showed so much of the bad side of the monsters and hardly any of the good. Or maybe it was a show more simpler message -- if you bottle up your feelings they will get bigger and bigger and overwhelm you -- but I don't really feel like there was much of an effective mechanism for defusing them either. show less

The art is beautiful, but the writing needs some work. There are some weird diversions into scientific discussion. The information is good, but there is maybe too much of it and it's presented in such a way that it interrupts the rhythm of the story. I also felt that the author's message got in the way of the storytelling. Not every story for children needs to have a message and, when they do, they need to still care about the story and, for me, the message/moral was too intrusive and ruined show more the sense of fantasy and whimsy that a story involving a tree sprite (or something similar) should have. The author also relied too heavily on the use of "whoa" as an exclamation and she spelled it "woah" every time, which is incorrect and actually made me angry, both in the repetitiveness and the misspelling.

Four stars for the art, two stars for the writing for an average of three stars. show less