Betty's Pick
Creaky Acres by Calista Brill and Nilah Magruder
A couple of months ago, I was lucky enough to receive an advanced reader copy of Creaky Acres by Calista Brill and illustrated by Nilah Magruder. I immediately shared it with my 8-year old daughter. We always love reading together at bedtime, but when we started Creaky Acres, we both started looking forward to reading time more than usual. But let me back up and give some info about the book!
Creaky Acres is a middle-grade graphic novel and tells the story of Nora, who is a prize-winning horseback rider with a tight-knit group of friends living in the suburbs. But her whole world changes quickly when her mom accepts a prestigious job, which relocates the family to a rural, much less affluent town where Nora is also the only Black kid in class. Furthermore, she and her beloved horse, Hay Fever, also need to adjust to the new barn– Creaky Acres–which is a lot less fancy than Nora is used to, and includes a ragtag crew of riders and staff. She has a lot to teach her new friends, but Nora is surprised to find that they have some things to teach her as well.
Gosh, this was such a refreshing middle-grade read. The pacing was excellent, and Mary and I laughed out loud multiple times. Magruder made fantastic use of the comics medium: implementing wonderful full page spreads, such as one about how to groom a horse; showing with lots of visual details (not telling) the difference between Nora’s old life and her new one; and wonderful character design for the eccentric Creaky Acres crew. I loved that in some ways this was a typical “slice of life” middle grade Big Move (™) story. But in most ways, it was so fresh. The story really focuses on the barn and Nora’s passion for horseback riding. And the way that race, class, and geographic location intersected was very specific – it didn’t feel cliche or playing into tired tropes.
Because the story is so good, it was a joy for Mary and I to read this together, and to learn about horseback riding. But it also brought up questions about what it’s like to be the new kid, what it’s like to be the only Black student in class, and what it’s like to have more (or less) material status than one’s classmates. These aren’t always the easiest topics to bring up in an authentic way, so I really appreciated it for that as well.
Overall, this was my favorite middle grade book I read this year–besides Sea Legs–and I hope lots of middle graders find it! I also hope adults who enjoy high quality middle grade will find it too.
