Dominican Spirits and Caribbean Jumbies: A Dual Review [MG Review]

Ghost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega

🍂 Interview @ Spooky Middle Grade 🍂 Review by Alicia @ A Kernel of Nonsense 🍂 Review by Cande @ Latinx Book Magic

• 📝 Plot summary: 12 year old Lucely lives with her papi Simon, who runs ghost tours in St. Augustine, Florida. Lucely can see the ghosts of her family. These ghosts live with her and Simon and take the form of firefly spirits (cocuyos, based on Dominican folklore). When Lucely realizes that Simon may not have enough money to keep their home, she and her best friend Syd cast a spell that backfires. The spell unleashes malevolent spirits, harming Lucely’s firefly family and the town. Syd and Lucely must work with Syd’s grandmother Babette and her unusual cat Chunk to reverse the damage.
• Ghost Squad features several vivid settings. The willow tree in Lucely’s backyard is decorated with mason jars, home to Lucely’s cocuyos family. Babette lives in an old house surrounded by trees, accessible only by a decrepit-looking footbridge or rowboat over swampy waters. Lucely and Syd creeping around Huguenot Cemetery and its mausoleums late at night is one of the spookier scenes of the book. (St Augustine Memorial Cemetery and Tolomato Cemetery also feature.)
• Babette defines what it means to be a cool grandmother. I saw Ortega refer to Babette as “Ghost Squad’s breakout star”. I have to agree with that! Although Babette can’t fix the problem Lucely and Syd created, she helps rather than hinders – and she does so in a pretty rocking way. (Now that I’m writing this, I realize Babette reminds me a bit of Harper’s grandmother in Ellen Oh’s Spirit Hunters.)
• The excellent cover illustration by Lorena Alvarez (who created the stunning graphic novel Night Lights) captures the mood of Ghost Squad. Colourful, ghostly, maybe a little surprising and scary at times (as Lucely’s expression might suggest) but mostly a fun read. Syd’s banter made me grin more than once.
• Of course, the key middle grade themes of friendship and (found) family are strong in Ghost Squad. Lucely has one living blood relative in her home, but her spirit family, Syd, and Babette all protect and support her, as she does them.
• 💭 The Bottom Line: An entertaining story crafted around Dominican identity and folklore, Ghost Squad will make you laugh more often than scream.

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The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste

🍂 Baptiste shares the origin of The Jumbies @ The Brown Bookshelf 🍂 Review by Sinead @ Huntress of Diverse Books 🍂 Review by Alex @ Randomly Reading 

• 📝 Plot summary: Bold Corinne, afraid of nothing she might encounter on her island home, lives with her father and sells oranges in the market. One day, the beautiful and bewitching Severine arrives at the market. Corinne returns home to find her father enchanted by the woman. With the help of three new friends, Corinne must find out how to push back against Severine and her army of jumbies (and learn something surprising about her family along the way.)
• The Jumbies has some similar appeal factors to Ghost Squad: vivid setting (in this case, a Caribbean island), girl living with her father, working with friends to defeat supernatural beings. But the books’ covers highlight a key difference between the two: The Jumbies is a lot scarier than Ghost Squad.
• You might shudder if you think of encountering the various jumbies Corinne and company face throughout the book. The main antagonist is the beautiful and bewitching Severine, who wants to reclaim the island for the jumbies. She’s a piece of work, but for me the creepiest jumbies are the douen, childlike yet extremely strong creatures with deep masculine voices and backward feet who lure children into the forest.
• Corinne’s friends play a larger role than most friend sidekicks in middle grade fiction. Malik and Douki (two boys who live alone outside the village) have a whole segment told from their perspective, when they’re separated from Corinne. While Dru (full name Drupatee Sareena Rootsingh) doesn’t have any chapters from her perspective, she also departs from the archetypal friend character in that she doesn’t consistently trust Corinne.
• Baptiste also writes a few chapters from Severine’s perspective. (They’re all pretty eerie, lol.)
• 💭 The Bottom Line: With plenty of creepy creatures inspired by Caribbean folklore and an engaging protagonist, The Jumbies will keep you invested, if also on your toes! I will be sure to read the next two books in this trilogy.

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What are your favourite middle grade books based in non-Western folklore?