Elatsoe

When Ellie's cousin dies under mysterious circumstances and tells her in a dream that he was murdered by Abe Allerton of Willowbee, Ellie and her parents travel to the funeral and investigate. Ellie has help from her friend, Jay, and her ghost dog, Kirby, who she raises from Below using the secret knowledge given to her family by her six-great-grandmother.

The way in which Apache folklore and the stories of Six-Great are interspersed with this fantasy mystery are beautifully done. I loved that Ellie's parents are super supportive and loving and she has other ways of having agency that don't depend on absent or dead parents. The friendship between Ellie and Jay is fantastic. I started reading slowly only picking it up before bed, but the show more suspense and pace ratchet up until I was reading it during the day to find out what happened and looking for something slightly more relaxing right before I fell asleep. Highly recommended. show less

Elatsoe is a YA fantasy novel that takes place in a version of the US where ghosts can be raised, psychics are real, and fairy circles can be used for magical transport. I loved the worldbuilding in this book, which takes familiar fantasy beings like ghosts and vampires and combines their usual rules with fresh and clever takes. I also enjoyed the way it combines fantasy elements our main character is familiar with and mysterious new ones the reader figures out alongside her. The stories about her famous ancestor Six-Great also provided some great action scenes while informing us of what Ellie is already familiar with and also served as a natural way to show how she compares herself to her ancestors and wonders if she'll be able to live show more up to their legacies. And the illustrations at the top of every chapter were always a treat.

Along the way, it also addresses some tough topics in a way that's both fun to read and easy for teen readers to understand. For example, there's a scene (mild spoiler) where Ellie stops by a gas station with a museum in the back and notices the worker in the front is displaying some signs she associates with racism. When she buys a fossil from the back, she asks for a hand-written receipt, and readers may not understand why... until the worker at the front asks if she paid for the fossil and she whips it out to end the argument before it can even begin.

And this isn't just a scene inserted to force teen readers learn something, like a parent hiding vegetables in a dessert. We get to learn a lot about Ellie as a character, and the fossil becomes an important plot element. Everything flows naturally, just as it should when depicting a character for whom this is a part of life.

I also loved the fact that everyone in the book treats it as natural that Ellie's best friend is a teenage boy who happens to also be a cheerleader. Ellie is stated to be asexual and uninterested in romantic relationships, and no one gives her a hard time. No one makes jokes about her and Jay being "secretly interested in each other" or tells them they'd be "great together". No one makes fun of Jay for being a cheerleader, and his skills even come in handy. I do wish there was a scene in which Ellie watches Jay at cheer practice or a sports game, since the alternative is a few actions and dialogue bits that feel a little shoe-horned in to ensure the reader doesn't forget that he's a cheerleader. Truly, though, I just really appreciated a book that normalizes these things.

I actually have very few complaints about this book that aren't nitpicks. I do wish there had been a little more clarification regarding vampirism, and it feels like a scene is missing in the ending where one particular character (in my opinion) should have addressed their actions leading up to the climax, but apart from these small complaints, this book is so well-written. It's seriously impressive as a debut novel.

As far as content warnings go, it's just the ones you would expect from reading the description. There's death and violence, some depictions of racism against Ellie and her family, and appropriate attention given to things we all know were done to the Apache in the past. The only reason I can see teen readers avoiding it on these grounds would be if plot elements like a family member being murdered/dying in a car crash hit too close to home. For everyone else, it seems entirely suitable to me.

Truly, this seems like a fantastic book for teenage readers. I wish it would have been around when I was that age because I think it would have fit right in with my favorites. show less

Elatsoe surprised me. I wasn’t expecting to LOVE a middle grade book so much but it is a true gem of a magical fantasy told through a Lipan Apache lens. Darcie Little Badger deserves every speck of the praise and accolades that seem to be pouring in for this treat of a story.

I read this as part of my Norton finalist packet.

What a fantastic YA book! Elatsoe has an urban fantasy vibe, kinda, but spins everything in a brilliant, original way. A big reason for that is the dynamic, smart heroine, Elatsoe aka Ellie. She's still a high schooler but she has big dreams of becoming a paranormal PI. She knows the paranormal well, as she was raised on the stories of her incredible Lipan Apache ancestress Six-Great, and her near-constant companion is the ghost of her beloved dog, who she raised herself. When her cousin is in a terrible car accident, he reaches out in a dream to tell her this was no accident, but murder. Ellie goes along with her parents to take care of her cousin's widow, and finds herself investigating show more not the murderer but an entire creepy town.

I loved how smart this book was. Ellie is a kid, sure, but she is competent, and she is respected for her competence by her parents and those who know her. That is so refreshing! That doesn't take away from the tension in the book, either, because Ellie still has a lot to learn. This is a story packed with twists and turns, and the world Little Badger established is endlessly fascinating. I mean, I tend to avoid books with vampires because I feel they have been so overdone, but the way they come across here feels fresh and new, and I LOVED a scene where Ellie and her mom banish an unwelcome vampire.

I hope there are more books set in this world. I would love to visit here again! show less

Bought this for my nephew and needed to vet it. I don't know what I was expecting but I was a little startled by how classically childrens-magic-story it began. Once I adjusted I quite enjoyed it. Good treatment of everything from colonialism to school projects at a level this 9 year old can absolutely comprehend without feeling talked down to. The narrative is well paced and fun to read yet nothing serious is dolled up or glossed over. In 9 years, this is the first time we've found a story with an Apache hero/ine, and I'm so sad about that and grateful for this volume.

For reasons that should be obvious, some of my favorite childhood books were Nate the Great mysteries starring the eponymous boy detective. As I got older, I graduated to Encyclopedia Brown, the Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew. So while I never watched Scooby Doo, clearly I had a genre: bad guys getting foiled by those meddling kids.

Darcie Little Badger’s debut YA novel lands firmly in that genre. This time, the meddling kid is 17-year-old Elatsoe (eh-LAT-soe-ay), a Lipan Apache girl living in a version of Texas where descendants of the Fairy King Oberon might rub shoulders with vampires living under sunscreen, sunglasses, and strict regulation by American law. Elatsoe herself comes from a line of Apache ghost whisperers and monster show more killers, a heritage she’ll need when her cousin dies in strange circumstances.

I’m a sucker in any case for everyday magic operating side by side with smartphones, but what’s really charming about DLB’s award-winning novel is how effortlessly she weaves her own legacy into the mystery. Apache views of death, the afterlife, and the necessity of keeping a strict distance between the dead and the living shape the plot so organically that entertainment doubles as cultural education.

I also appreciate that Elatsoe’s family is functional. Her parents are attentive and engaged, she’s respectful and (mostly) obedient, and interpersonal tensions are handled appropriately. I realize a lot of youth suffer in terrible homes, but I’m disheartened when adults in YA fiction are uniformly a mix of absent, clueless, or bad. I don’t think it’s healthy to present kids with a world where they’re the only heroes amidst stupid or wicked adults. DLB offers a much healthier ideal despite a small scattering of language and some scenes of violence that, if tame relative to other YA media, some parents will find unnecessary.

I don’t want to spoil the plot by saying too much, though I will say that young readers will no doubt wish they could have a ghost dog ready to pop out of thin air to play invisible catch. Part of the fun is discovering for yourself all the little textures of an America where historical tragedies of westward expansion resulted in Old World and New World magic coexisting in a uniquely shared destiny.

Elatsoe’s world is imaginative and engaging, and she herself is relatable and very real: a normal American girl who also happens to be a proud Lipan Apache who can raise the ghosts of dead critters. DLB’s book intrigued me enough that I visited the tribe’s website to learn more about these people who endured so much, survived so much, and contributed so much to this land we both love. I might never have learned to appreciate my Apache fellow citizens quite so well if it weren’t for that meddling kid. show less

I do love a good supernatural murder mystery, and this incorporates a fabulous supernatural murder mystery. Also, teenagers who have great relationships with their (all living!) parents, which is too rare in YA fantasy.

Lots of my thoughts are spoilery, but Little Badger has done a great job of meshing Lipan and European beliefs (supernatural and otherwise) in terms of the implications of one meeting the other. Also, Ellie, our protagonist, and Kirby the ghost dog, are adorable.