Citation:
Older, Daniel Jose. (2015). Shadowshaper. New York, NY: Arthur A.
Levine Books.
Summary:
Sierra is a 16-year-old from Brooklyn
who loves her crazy family, her hilarious friends, and painting. Her current
project is drawing a huge dragon on the wall of an abandoned skyscraper, built
but deserted before completion. Things start to get a little weird when her
grandfather who has had a stroke has a moment of clarity and gives her a
strange message about something called Shadowshaping. With the help of a fellow
teenage artist named Robbie and her brother, Sierra discovers her family’s
heritage of shadowshaping, connecting with the spirit world through art. While
she falls in love with this discovery, the future of shadowshaping is at stake
and Sierra must solve the puzzle in order to protect her family’s special
legacy.
Response:
The dialogue of this book felt very
authentic and realistic. The characters spoke with casual vernacular, and I
felt it was an accurate portrayal of what real dialogue sounds like between
many teens. Overall this was a good book for students interested in art, family
heritage, and fantasy worlds. It also included the topics of gentrification,
acceptance of oneself, coming of age, the struggle to find one’s identity and
issues of race and skin color. Though the plot was interesting, I felt that the
book was lacking a bit in the way that the plot unfolded. It seemed to me that in
order to move the plot along, Older had Sierra make discoveries that were
somewhat unclear and illogical.
Textbook Connections:
Genre: fiction
Subgenre: low fantasty, the setting is
in modern-day Brooklyn, but there are fantastical elements involved as humans
use art to call upon and use spirits of the deceased to do their bidding.
This book is great for reluctant
readers
Other Resources:
Goodreads
book review
NPR article on Shadowshaper
Article about female black hero in Shadowshaper
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