YA. Set in a city in a world very much like our own. Except the city – no mention is made of broader polities of any sort – is a couple of decades past a revolution. And that revolution seems to have been based on prison abolitionist and transformative justice principles, though such terms are never used. The main character is a teenage Black trans girl. Quite unexpectedly – this is not at all the sort of thing that she had ever thought might be possible – a clawed, horned creature emerges from one of her mother’s paintings and insists that a monster, which is the word this city uses to describe those human sources of society-wide and interpersonal harm overcome in their revolution, exists in her best friend’s house and they must hunt it. And precisely because of that history of societal transformation, no one wants to believe that this sort of monster still exists. So: An age-appropriate but sophisticated and nuanced look at harm, the ways our responses and our assumptions and our reactions protect those who do harm and betray those harmed, and some of ways, both more helpful and less, that harm might call us to act. Not at all didactic, and again it never even uses the term, but a great, story-based introduction to thinking about these questions, and to the kinds of hard and imperfect but ultimately hopeful answers found under the banner of transformative justice. Good storytelling and an enjoyable read, a smart use of the fantastical to explore important ideas without coming across as if you’ve written a book to explore important ideas…and probably also quite useful in the right sort of classroom context.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.