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A review by taberiusrex
The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole by Michelle Cuevas
4.0
It definitely took me a little while to adjust to the right headspace for this book. It's not the type of thing I would have read when I was the target age. But after a little while, it definitely clicked.
The text is full of quirky humor and wit. The story is interesting, baffling at first until you understand what it's supposed to be illustrating: the anatomy of grief. It might start small and pointed, but if you don't take the time to process it, it grows and grows and eventually swallows up everything you thought was important.
Probably the biggest disappointment were the characters. Stella, the main character, is naturally fleshed out over the course of the story, but nobody else gets the same chance. This makes sense for characters like the mom, but Stella's little brother Cosmo doesn't project any sort of growth. His development comes across more like Stella becoming aware of her brother's qualities, and I found that vaguely unsatisfying.
This is a very short read. It took me weeks because of other reasons, but a decently fast reader can probably finish the whole thing in an afternoon. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone who's currently grieving, but it's a good explanation of the emotional truth of grief for younger readers around them.
That's one MCBA book down, four to go!
The text is full of quirky humor and wit. The story is interesting, baffling at first until you understand what it's supposed to be illustrating: the anatomy of grief. It might start small and pointed, but if you don't take the time to process it, it grows and grows and eventually swallows up everything you thought was important.
Probably the biggest disappointment were the characters. Stella, the main character, is naturally fleshed out over the course of the story, but nobody else gets the same chance. This makes sense for characters like the mom, but Stella's little brother Cosmo doesn't project any sort of growth. His development comes across more like Stella becoming aware of her brother's qualities, and I found that vaguely unsatisfying.
This is a very short read. It took me weeks because of other reasons, but a decently fast reader can probably finish the whole thing in an afternoon. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone who's currently grieving, but it's a good explanation of the emotional truth of grief for younger readers around them.
That's one MCBA book down, four to go!