Victor LaValle’s novella, Lucretia and the Kroons, provides evidence of the impossibility to protect youth from the world’s horrors. Twelve-year-old Lucretia, who goes by the childish nickname of Loochie, is faced with doubt, illness, death, and drugs before she can even step into her days as a teen. With her friend Sunny suffering from cancer treatments, and a group of girls already showing potential of becoming the school’s mean girls, Loochie finds herself regretting that her mother seems to be her best friend.

Loochie pushes her mother into convincing Sunny’s grandmother to let her come over for a rare play date, even as Sunny is so weak she cannot lift her fist. When her mother leaves for the day and Sunny still hasn’t arrived, Loochie becomes annoyed. Ambulance sirens begin to invade her apartment and instead of becoming worried, she tries to drown out the sound, only to become aware of a strange woman outside her window.

The woman ignores all of Loochie’s efforts to get her attention, and reveals something that Loochie never thought she would see in her life: she resembles a member of the crackhead family, the Kroons, that Loochie’s older brother warned her about. Not only does fear overtake Loochie— courage also starts to course through her veins, as she sees that the sickly, disfigured woman has Sunny’s hat.

She can only settle on making her way to the dreaded Kroon apartment and on trying to save Sunny, whom she believes to have been kidnapped. Now she must hope that her courage and love for a friend will overcome the fear the other Kroons will instill in her, on top of the strange yet vaguely familiar world their apartment will take her through.

Victor LaValle has revealed the complex emotions and situations that a child can go through, which may not be easily apparent because their seeming innocence. He also allows readers to realize what horrors can happen to a child. From the time Loochie sees the woman outside her window and travels through the world of the Kroons’ apartment, readers will question the genre of this novella.

What once seemed to be reality has turned into a world that doesn’t quite make sense, but as this becomes the main setting for the rest of the story, it becomes more and more believable. The reader is drawn into Loochie’s frame of mind and what she believes the reader also starts to believe. This makes the ending of the novella even more emotionally charged.

Any confusion or doubt readers have as to what they are reading should be pushed aside. Everything will make sense once the book is read as a whole. The ending will also make readers take at least a moment to sit back and ponder the influence this book can have on anyone who reads it.

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In Dragonspeak, Andrew Robinson creates a world where, instead of learning to ride a bike, you learn to walk and even sail on water. Young Drew crawls through a tunnel one day to get away from a couple of bullies to find himself in a world that seems strangely perfect, at first. All the rules that he had to follow at home do not apply in this other world and there are no fighting parents to deal with either. In the place of Drew’s parents are Miss Jane, who brings the young boy both trouble and happiness in this new world, and a servant made from clay.

Just as Drew is starting to get used to this new world, Miss Jane asks him to travel to another world to speak to dragons. On his way, Drew encounters talking mice, a quirky captain, talking elevator vines, people who live vertically on the side of a mountain, and many more intriguing characters. He soon realizes through his travels that everyone seems to be connected in some way and that the easy going world that Miss Jane has presented him when he first arrived is not all it seems to be.

Readers who have read Robinson’s My Island, My Memories will recognize many of the references he makes to his childhood. There are so many similarities that readers may see the main character as a version of the author himself when he was a child going on a fictitious journey.

The only issue with the parallel between the two books is that some sections seem almost word for word the same, but those who have not read both will find Dragonspeak an adventure to savor. Although, the chapter that describes the close knit community of cottages that Robinson grew up around in My Island, My Memories would allow readers to have a clearer understanding of the portions in Dragonspeak that draw on those memories.

Throughout Dragonspeak, Robinson also includes foreshadowing in many scenes, whether a play on names or a slip up in a character’s speech, to help readers from succumbing to the innocent view Drew has of the new world he finds himself in. Eventually, Drew learns to question the things that seem to be too good. Remembering his parents back home helps him through the troubles he faces.

He starts to miss them despite the overwhelming feeling Drew has held onto that his parents are not worried over his disappearance because they are too busy fighting. This ache, along with new discoveries from his otherworldly friends, is what brings him to make a decision that could change his life, both in this strange world and the one back home.

Overall, Robinson’s Dragonspeak is an enjoyable read with glorious discoveries of another world created by children going through hardship. Every child may feel at some point in their lives that they need to get away from their world and thus create another. But, like Drew, they soon must choose between what they have created and what they have left behind.

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