A review by mcf
Dactyl Hill Squad by Daniel José Older

5.0

Daniel José Older is important for a lot of reasons, and two of them are the creation of brown world in a MG book and the existence of a heroic trans kid in that world. And not only is the world of the book almost without white people, when they are around they're often the villains (which is an excellent reversal of the trope that has demonize non-white people in fiction basically forever), and almost always involved in the slave trade. I admire and appreciate Older's willingness to talk about slavery and gender identity in a book for kids, because I would imagine those are topic from which less writers would shy away. As usual, he does both with frankness and sensitivity, and our world is a little better for another of his books being in it.