Twins are always known to be together even when apart, but have you ever read a book where the relationship between a pair of twins is slightly uneven? Hidden under the sleeve of every argument or ignorant glance, siblings will always have affection for one another; that’s the true beauty of having someone related to you by birth, let alone grow to the same heartbeat! Rea and the Blood of the Nectar by Payal Doshi is a book that encompasses magical wonders, presents foreign worlds in a new way, and represents sibling love! With seemingly unsolvable riddles, nightmares with hidden clues, and a new friend, the main protagonist, Rea, trudges her way to find her kidnapped twin brother, Rohan. The story is set in Darjeeling, India, where Rea lives with her mother, grandmother, and Rohan. Rea was never born with a silver spoon. Her mother has to work long hours by cleaning houses or by picking tea leaves at a tea plantation, just to make a living. Having to live under her brother’s shadow, who excels at everything compared to her, Rea feels pressure and sibling rivalry. For as long as they can remember, Rea and Rohan have always celebrated their birthday together. However, this time around, things were different. When the clock strikes midnight, Rohan slips out of bed to play cricket with his friends on their twelfth birthday. Rea secretly follows him. Longing to partake in the sport, she joins the opposing team and emerges victorious. Following Rea’s victory, Rohan walks away– puddled in a cloud of embarrassment – and mysteriously goes missing! Rohan’s disappearance and the strange reaction by her family to this untimely event left Rea suspicious. Holding herself responsible, she sets a new goal for herself: finding Rohan! As Rea sets out on her quest, she meets a fortune-teller and picks up clues on Rohan’s whereabouts. The story gains momentum as Rea discovers a mysterious portal in Darjeeling! With the help of her new friend, Rea embarks on a life-changing adventure, gripping onto the hope of finding her lost brother. Books that involve the evolution of the main character as a person are inspiring and entertaining. Rea and the Blood of the Nectar is one such book that perfectly portrays character development. At the start of the book, Rea’s selfish and demanding nature left her lonely and self-contained. However, once she portals into the kingdom of Astranthia, she uncovers new secrets about her family. While entering the world, Rea only had one goal– saving Rohan. An encounter with the evil queen, Razya, leads to a change in plans; Rea has to protect the kingdom of Astranthia and save her twin! Astranthia thrives on the sacred petals of the Som, and its nectar is used by the royal family and some common folk as powerful beams. The only way to unlock the powers of the blood nectar is to go on a personal trial. After saving a mob of people who were hurt by the queen’s guard, Rea slowly starts uncovering all of the secrets about herself, including her family. Rea and the Blood of the Nectar is a family-centered, magical tale. With the neatly woven theme of personal growth and perseverance, Payal Doshi can warm any reader’s heart with her well-organized plot twists. The captivating storyline ends with the celebration of Diwali in their village in Darjeeling. This Indian holiday celebrates the triumph of good over evil, resonating with Rea’s victory over the reign of Astranthia’s evil queen. Rea and the Blood of the Nectar explicitly reflects Payal Doshi’s culture-bound allusions and vivid imagery that revolves around show-stopping characters and a compelling self-growth theme! Rea and the Blood of the Nectar by Payal Doshi. Mango & Marigold Press, 2021. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
Book Reviews
The Whistling Season, Reviewed by Madeline, 11
This is a great book for kids who love words! I cling to every new word I hear, so as the main protagonist’s character developed, I saw lots of similarities between us. The story itself is about an intelligent boy named Paul Milliron who lives in Montana in the early 1900’s. His mom has recently passed away leaving his father Oliver struggling to take care of three growing boys, the house, and the farm. After reading a cleverly written newspaper ad, Oliver hires a housekeeper from Minneapolis. Not too long after, in a cloud of mystery, Rose Llewellyn arrives by train with her eccentric, well-educated brother Morris Morgan. And, life on the farm is never quite the same. As the story develops, the plot starts to twist and turn in unexpected but believable ways. When the teacher at the local one-room schoolhouse leaves her post unexpectedly, the school board is left with few options. But, after some convincing, Morris Morgan steps up and is hired to be the new educator. Personally, I enjoy how “Mr. Morgan” brings a quirky, new vitality to the old school, ruffling feathers, inadvertently angering the local bully, and winning over his students along the way. Meanwhile, Rose has created a stir in the small farming community of Marias Coulee and won the hearts of the Milliron family. At times, it’s almost as if the Milliron boys have a mother again, but domestic bliss comes to a screeching halt when Rose lets slip a key piece of her mysterious past. Devastated, it’s up to Paul, the oldest, to choose the best path forward and protect his family. As it turns out, this will require all of his “older brother powers” and intellect. Readers, this book is constantly interesting. Whether the author is telling you about the history and science of a comet, taking you to back in time to 1909, or entertaining you with one of several misadventures, you just can’t stop reading. The characters are truly intriguing, the descriptions make you feel like you’re actually there, and the tale is overall realistic and captivating. Somehow, Ivan Doig, the author, finds a way to throw a backwards horse race, Halley’s comet, a one-room schoolhouse, and a fixed prizefight into one astounding narrative. This is a wonderful, family-friendly work of historical fiction, and I highly recommend it! The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig. Mariner Books, 2007. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
Interview with Author Kate Milford
I have always been a big fan of Kate Milford’s books, and so when I heard she had a new book coming out I very quickly knew I would want to write about it. Since I had already written a blog post on her other books, I decided that instead of a review, I could interview her about the book and her writing in general. The Raconteur’s Commonplace Book was released February 23, and, unsurprisingly, it was very engaging and altogether wonderful. In it, strangers are trapped together at an inn, and as the blurb so eloquently puts it, “to pass the time, they begin to tell stories… that eventually reveal more about their own secrets than they intended.” Each story told in the tavern stands on its own, but an overarching story emerges from all of the tales, making the book feel like a short story collection where each short story indirectly contributes to the overarching one. It takes place in the 1930s, in the fictional city of Nagspeake, the same city in which Milford’s novel Greenglass House is set. In fact, in Greenglass House, the story’s main character Milo’s peaceful winter vacation comes abruptly to an end when unexpected guests start arriving at his parents’ inn. One of these strange guests has with her an old book which Milo ends up reading and the book even ends up driving some of Greenglass House’s plot. This book within a book is The Raconteur’s Commonplace Book, which readers can finally read for themselves. Below is a lightly edited version of my Q&A with the author Kate Milford. Sita Welt: Why did you decide to write “The Hollow-Ware Man” [the tale told by Sangwin] in verse? Kate Milford: It was actually one of the first stories I wrote for the book–I think the first three were “The Yankee Peddlers,” “The Devil and the Scavenger,” and then “The Hollow-ware Man.” I wrote the first draft of it back in 2014, when I thought I would be self-publishing The Raconteur’s Commonplace Book. I *think* my thinking at the time was that I wanted to write something that would be as haunting as the idea of this character was for me, and I love ominous old poems and ballads. Plus, since one of the things I wanted to do with Raconteur’s was represent a wide variety of different types of folklore, it would’ve been a bit of an omission not to have included something like a poem or a ballad. (In my head, I imagine there’s traditional music for it somewhere in Nagspeake.) But if I’m honest, I don’t think I was thinking about all that exactly, when I first sat down to write the poem. It was something I thought about later–that I wanted riddles and trickster tales and some form of fortune-telling, etcetera, and how nice that I already had something in verse. SW: Where did the idea of “old iron” come from? Why is old iron such a big part of your stories? [“Old iron” is a magical, self-aware iron in the books] KM: I began writing about Nagspeake’s self-aware ironmongery even before I had the first idea for a book set in the city. It was one of the earliest things I knew about Nagspeake. I actually don’t know why I started in with the self-aware iron in the first place, except I’ve always loved the way ironwork can take damage over the years that makes it look like plants growing at odd angles–like you’ve caught a fence or a railing mid-motion, and it’s frozen in place until you turn your back again. There really wasn’t a reason for it to make an appearance in Greenglass House, so it didn’t; however the iron is also why Nagspeake’s locally-made glass has the green tint that gives the house its name–iron oxide can give glass a greenish hue. But it turns up in the other books set in the city, building to what we see in The Thief Knot and The Raconteur’s Commonplace Book. Over time, it sort of became a character, in a sense. SW: Where did names like Trigemine, Alphonsus, Pantin, etc., come from? KM: Oh, I collect names from all sorts of places! I keep a notebook of names I like and words that I think might make interesting names. Old-fashioned words, obsolete words… right now there’s a tab open on my browser with a list of like a hundred types of seaweeds that I’ve been using for names in a current project. Sometimes if I know something about a character, I’ll pick a word or phrase that has a connection to them, then I’ll look up synonyms, etymology, history, etc., until I find something that sounds like a possible moniker. And sometimes I invent patterns to help me find names, mostly as a game to amuse myself. When I wrote the first draft of the story about the Yankee Peddlers, I gave them all names that were to do with the body. Trigemine, also a peddler, got his name from a body part, the trigeminal nerve. Sangwin’s name fits that pattern too, if you say it out loud. I didn’t invent the ‘Alphonsus,’ but his last name (being a Yankee Peddler) is Lung. Pantin means puppet in French, though I had to look it up just now to remember. The Haypottens got their surname from the word hypotenuse. I love finding names. Coming up with all the names for the different types of fire in “The Reckoning” was some of the best fun I had while writing this book. SW: I noticed that some of your stories seem to have a very eerie feel to them which gives them a very unique tone for a children’s book. Why did you decide to incorporate this into your writing and how did you manage that? KM: It’s just what I like, I guess! I’m a little like Mrs. Haypotten, trying to tell a cheery story to Maisie and
