Christina Soontornvat has the golden touch. This author has just received her third nod from the Newbery selection committee with a Newbery Honor Award for The Last Mapmaker. This is an author that deserves the accolades.
The Last Mapmaker is a middle grade fantasy with a Thai-inspired flare. The fantasy element is quite light, and the novel reads more like an adventure, with the majority of it taking place on a sea expedition. Ms. Soontornvat excels at getting the reader invested into the protagonist’s predicaments. Sai feels trapped by her class, her family, her culture, and her poverty; this feeling of entrapment causes her to feel helpless, to take risks, and to make decisions that she regrets.
Brisk pacing with prose that goes down easy, this book should have wide-appeal to adventure lovers, and there are themes for readers who want to dig deeper also. Kudos to Ms. Sontornvat for continuing to write uplifting stories for young readers!
Content Analysis:
Profanity/Language: None
Violence/Gore: Reports and references to war; character kicks another in the leg; boy punches girl in the stomach; character is chased by a thief; character is grabbed and uses force, kicking, etc. to escape; report of how someone was injured when saving someone else from being killed; scene in which whalers use a baby whale as bait to capture and kill an adult whale with some description of harpooning and beginning of the process to harvest the whale for oil; destruction of boat(s) from natural forces; characters are seen fighting–implied death of one; character with facial scar tells how he got it; report of broken leg; characters struggle and one tries to throw another over a cliff; implied deaths at sea from storms, illness.
Sex/Nudity: Girl blushes when someone says she is hearing from a boy often; character tells someone she had a child out of wedlock.
Mature Subject Matter:
War, destruction of economies/natural resources, economic disparity, class discrimination, theft, mutiny/treason, forgery, poverty, family disownment, incarceration of a family member.
Drugs/Alcohol:
References to a bar; character drinks; character becomes drunk and passes out; poison/drug administered with ill intent.
