Tracey Baptiste

Fairy tales continue to be one of the cornerstones of my reading. The age that the story is written for doesn't matter. Give me a re-telling, or a classic, and I'll sit there wide-eyed and invested until the very end. So, it's not surprise that I picked up The Jumbies. I love reading folklore from different countries and, despite never having read "The Magic Orange Tree", I couldn't wait for Tracey Baptiste to tell me a new story. Haitian folklore? Yes please, and thank you very much.

Before show more I get started on the actual story itself, let me say that the audio version of this book is fabulous! Robin Miles does an excellent job of bringing this story to life, complete with wonderful accents and dialect. If you're looking for a way to get the whole experience, I highly recommend the audio. I know I would have loved this story either way. Still, having Robin Miles read it to me made it infinitely better.

Which leads me to the fact this is a gem of folktale! Just scary enough to give shivers, without being too over the top, this is the perfect story to share with a young reader. Corrine and her friends are brave and true. There is plenty of family love. A heaping helping of magic. Even better, there's a thread at the bottom of this story that shares the importance of living in harmony. About the importance of nature, and living in harmony with others. I adored every bit of it. This was the perfect blend of heroism, and childlike wonder.

If you're a fan of fairy tales, folklore, or just stories that will make you shiver and smile in equal measures, this is for you. I honestly wish I still worked with children so that I could share this with them. It was wonderful! show less

Corinne La Mer, the half-human, half-jumbie girl whose story began in Tracey Baptiste's The Jumbies, returns in this second fantasy novel devoted to her adventures. When children on her Caribbean island begin to go missing, Corinne finds herself once again an object of suspicion for many of her neighbors. She herself suspects that Severine, her jumbie mother's sister, has returned from the sea into which she was cast at the end of the last installment of the series. Together with her show more friends, Dru, Bouki and Malik, Corinne sets out to enlist the aid of powerful water jumbie Mama D'Leau in her quest to find and rescue the children. This aid comes with a price however, and Corinne and her friends soon find themselves involved in an epic adventure stretching from the Caribbean to West Africa and back again, dealing with mermaids, missing magical jewels, the transatlantic slave trade, and Papa Boi - the powerful jumbie who protects the forest on their island home - along the way...

Like its predecessor, I found the story in Rise of the Jumbies quite engaging. I appreciated Tracey Baptiste's incorporation of the folklore and mythology of her native Trinidad into the story, and the ways in which she tied that folklore to the stories and traditions of West Africa, from which it is no doubt descended. Although the question of the relationship between Mama D'Leau and Mami Wata is never quite answered in the story, the implication is that they are either related, or the same figure. Whatever the case may be, I appreciated this glimpse into folkloric traditions that don't always find their way into American children's books. I also greatly enjoyed meeting the gentle Papa Boi, who, in traditional lore, is married to Mama D'Leau. The story-line involving the mermaids was fascinating and tragic - they are revealed to have once been human girls, captured as slaves in Africa, and survivors of the sinking of the slave ship on which they were being carried - although the historian in me couldn't help but wince a bit at the idea that they would find descendants of their families along the coast of West Africa, given what I know of the slave trade. By sheer coincidence, I happened to be reading an article about the involvement of coastal West Africans in the slave trade, while I was also reading the conclusion of Rise of the Jumbies, and the critical adult in me kept thinking: wouldn't it be more likely that the children and mermaids would encounter descendants of those who had sold the girls/mermaids, rather than their own families, who probably came from further inland? Of course, this is a fantasy novel, so despite my historical qualms, I still enjoyed the story.

On an entirely separate note, I did feel, much as I did with the first book, that the conclusion here was a little rushed. The narrative never really explains why, or describes how the islanders, so hostile to Corinne after she rescued the children, had a change of heart, making their reverse course, in offering gifts in order to recall the mermaid Corinne to the island, and restore her to human form, rather mystifying. In one scene, Laurent is disgusted by Corinne, but the next time we see him, he's encouraging his mother to participate in the efforts to bring her back. Baptiste never really accounts for the change of heart. One wishes that she had fleshed out the chapters occurring after Corinne departs, in order to make these developments feel a little less random. Still, despite that criticism, and the historical issue mentioned above, I did find Rise of the Jumbies entertaining, and often quite moving. I liked the incorporation of the history of the slave trade into the more folkloric narrative - after all, folktales have helped many human groups to survive times of great suffering and injustice - and I appreciated the discussion throughout of issues of difference and belonging. In short, I enjoyed this enough that I will be tracking down the third installment of the series, The Jumbie God's Revenge. show less

Corinne La Mer has settled back into island life after her fight with the jumbie Severine (The Jumbies, 2015), but no sooner does normalcy arrive than it leaves again when an earthquake rocks the island and her friend Laurent goes missing.

Other children start to disappear, and Corinne’s only clue leads her to the water. With steadfast friends Malik, Bouki, and Dru, she sets out to uncover what mysterious force has taken the children and defeat it. She makes a bargain with the water jumbie show more Mama D’Leau for help, but even with a supernatural boost, Corinne will need all of her strengths to defeat the mysterious kidnapper and save her friends. Baptiste’s colorful, rich Caribbean characters return triumphantly in this sequel, and the mythos of the island continues to expand. Baptiste deepens what could be a light and charming undersea adventure with ties to African religions and the historical legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. As other young children of the African diaspora sort out their feelings about and relationships with slavery, so do Corinne and her loyal friends. While other tales may address it with a casual aside or scrub out the grimiest bits, leaving history in a shiny, tidy package removed from reality, Baptiste allows her characters to find and create ways to grapple with uncomfortable truths.

A stirring and mystical tale sure to keep readers thinking past the final page. (Fantasy. 8-12)

-Kirkus Review show less

Trinidadian-American author Tracey Baptiste, whose middle-grade fantasy trilogy, The Jumbies, explored the world of these folkloric creatures of the Caribbean, returns to that theme in this charming picture-book. Despite being assured by her mother that jumbies are only to be found in stories, Naya sets out one night to find some, meeting a douen, a lagahoo, a soucouyant, Papa Boi and Mama D'Leau in the process. Each creature challenges her, before joining the hunt, and eventually the group show more find themselves back at Naya's home...

Having read and enjoyed Baptiste's fantasy novels about the jumbies, I was quite excited to discover that she had also written a picture-book on the subject, and lost no time in tracking it down. Looking for a Jumbie did not disappoint, pairing an engaging adventure story with a repetitive sing-song structure, and just the right blend of spooky and sweet appeal, with cute artwork from illustrator Amber Ren. I would love to read a more extensive collection of traditional tales featuring these and other kinds of jumbies, but Baptiste's book is a nice introduction to them, for younger audiences. Recommended to picture-book readers looking for stories about less well-known fantastical creatures, and to anyone seeking children's books with a Caribbean cultural background. show less