Snow Summer

Gr 6–8—A contemporary, nature-based fantasy. Teenage Wyn March lives with her foster family in the Yorkshire Dales of England. The world has suffered years of increasingly cold weather, culminating in a snow-covered summer. Mystical characters start appearing in the protagonist's town of Pateley Bridge, urging her to accept her true nature and to use her great powers to end the winter. At first, she resists her magical gifts, and her journey to acceptance forms the heart of the novel. The author's skills as a garden designer and beekeeper are evident in the lovingly created natural and supernatural settings, which are full of the plants and animals of northern England. The protagonist is a prickly and sometimes unsympathetic character, and it's left to appealing secondary characters like her kindly foster father and sister to provide some human warmth and emotion. Wyn's alter ego and some minor characters use the names of places or gods from various cultures, such as Mugasa of the Bambuti of the Congo Basin; Uluru, which is sacred to the indigenous Anangu of Australia; and Denali, which is central to the creation story of the Koyukon Athabascans of Alaska. These instances of cultural appropriation are problematic elements in an otherwise thoughtful fantasy. The book concludes with the timely allegorical message that climate upheaval comes from nature spirits' anger at humans' treatment of the earth.