Every year, the Sunshine State Young Readers Award (SSYRA) Program in Florida names several lucky books Sunshine State books. These books have been voted on by schools across Florida as “the best” books for K-12 students. Alongside students’ and teachers’ votes, these books are “selected for their wide appeal, literary value, varied genres, curriculum connections, and/or multicultural representation.” These books make up the bulk of summer reading lists in Florida. 

This year, a local school reached out to the public libraries and asked for help with their annual Battle of the Books. The librarians who signed up had to read two books from the Grade 6-8 list and write fifteen open-ended comprehension questions about them. A chance to read cool kids’ books on the clock? I jumped at the opportunity. 

The first book I chose was The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh. It was an excellent book, but not exactly uplifting. For my second book, I chose Brick Dust and Bones by M.R. Fournet because it sounded like a fun urban fantasy romp. I was not disappointed. 

SSYRA’s description: 

Marius Grey hunts Monsters. He’s not supposed to. He’s twelve and his job as a Cemetery Boy is to look after the ghosts in his family’s graveyard. He should be tending these ghosts and–of course–going to school to learn how to live between worlds without getting into trouble. But, Marius has an expensive goal. He wants to bring his mother back from the dead, and that takes a LOT of mystic coins, which means a LOT of Monster Hunting, and his mother’s window to return is closing. If he wants her back, Marius is going to have to go after bigger and meaner monsters. Can Marius navigate New Orleans’s gritty monster bounty-hunting market, or will he have to say goodbye to his mother forever?

The book opens with Marius staking out a little girl’s bedroom, waiting for a boogeyman to arrive. After a magical tussle, he traps the terrifying creature in his monster book and turns it in for the bounty.  By the time Marius got to the Habada-Chérie to get his reward, I was totally hooked. I realized the Brick Dust and Bones has so many things I loved about Harry Potter, minus an incredibly problematic author. 

There’s obviously the magical orphan boy to start, but it feels sharper than Harry’s loss. Marius’s father disappeared when he was young, and his mother died two years before the start of the book. Marius misses and mourns them, especially his mother. Harry Potter misses what he might have had, but Marius knows true, deep loss. 

Marius’s loss isn’t as straightforward as you might think. He can still hear his mother’s voice and have conversations with her. Not all the time, and sometimes her voice falls silent when he needs her the most. Even with her voice whispering in his ear, Marius still feels her absence deeply. Just being able to hear his mother’s is not enough to make him stop missing her. He’s also dealing with a different kind of loss, that of his childhood. Marius is pretty self-sufficient, but he doesn’t always want to be. There are moments when he just misses having someone to take care of him so he can be a kid. 

The other thing I really loved about this book – and Harry Potter – was the well-developed magical world. Specifically, the magical world that’s just under normal people’s noses. There are three types of people: totally normal folks, totally magical folks, and fringe people. Marius is a fringe person, with one foot in the normal world, and one in the magical world. I think the setting that best exemplifies this is Mama Roux’s. 

As a cemetery boy, Marius’s job is to take care of the mausoleums in his graveyard, as well as the ghosts that inhabit it. One of his chores is to take the ghosts to Mama Roux’s for dinner. Mama Roux’s is a neutral zone, where normal families come to dine without even knowing about the ghosts and demons around them. The ghosts have to avoid the normal children, though, since they’re more likely to see them. This is a place where demons cut deals with humans, ghosts pretend to eat fake food, and normal people don’t realize a thing. 

Mama Roux’s isn’t the only thing about the setting I love. The book takes place in New Orleans, a city that is already ripe for magic. One of Marius’s teachers, Madame Millet, reads tarot cards for tourists at night but teaches fringe kids real magic during the day. The magical store he visits sells incense and gris-gris dolls as souvenirs for normal people, and supplies for actual spellcasting and monster hunting to people like Marius. Marius hunts monsters in the bayou, grave hops around the city’s cemeteries, and even uses the word beignets to signal a poltergeist. New Orleans’s burial traditions come back in a big way at the end of the book. There are some books where the setting isn’t that important. Rich People With Problems could take place in Anytown, USA, and you’d still have the same story. But if you took Brick Dust and Bones out of Louisiana, you’d have a very different story, and one that probably isn’t as much fun.

There’s a lot of good fantasy action sequences and monsters. Lots of monsters. 

The story opens with Marius hidden in a girl’s bedroom closet, waiting for the lights to go out. Once they do, Marius faces off against the boogeyman hiding under the girl’s bed. He fights a “candy lady” who turns out to be more dangerous than he’d thought. There’s a fantastic final battle against a deadly monster who’s way out of Marius’s league. Even Marius’s best friend is a monster: Rhiannon, a mermaid who’s more man-eating siren than Princess Ariel.

Some of these monsters are based on Cajun and Hoodoo tradition, which was really refreshing. I really enjoyed reading about monsters that were outside the typical fantasy fare. Marius’s unconventional friendship with Rhiannon was great. While other monster hunters would have captured her without a second thought, befriending the mermaid is a boon to Marius in a number of ways.

There are also literal fire and brimstone demons, which would have scared me if I read this as a kid. Blame it on the Catholic upbringing. Demons occupy an interesting place in Marius’s world. They’re not monsters that Marius would hunt, but they’re not good, either. Humans, even normal humans, can make deals with demons. Some of these deals affect Marius personally.

If all that doesn’t make you want to read the book, I’ll add this: the ticking time bomb. Marius had two years to earn the Mystic Coins he needs to bring his mother back, and his window of time to earn them is rapidly closing. I’ve also read some books where the hero ultimately decides not to bring their deceased love one back to life, and I didn’t know how this one would go. Without giving away the ending, I honestly didn’t know if he was going to make the deadline…or choose to not bring his mom back to life.

Brick Dust and Bones was such a fun book, especially after reading The Lost Year. For a book full of monsters, it still has very human themes: loss, grief, responsibility, and friendship. There are some scary sequences, so I would recommend this book for ages 10 and up. It’s a great introduction to horror/urban fantasy for kids and an absolute blast to read. 

The questions I wrote for this book are more trivia than discussion questions. Here they are (contains spoilers): 

1.       Marius is an orphan, but he has adults who look out for him. How do these adults act like parents to him?

2.       Marius’s mother tells him that he’s “so much older than you ought to be.” What did she mean by this?

3.       Rhiannon says that she doesn’t understand “the in-between stuff” of human relationships. What does she mean by “in-between stuff”?

4.       Most monster hunters would have captured Rhiannon. How does Marius benefit from having her as his friend instead?

5.       Why has Marius avoided sleeping in his bed?

6.       Why does Marius pay off Mrs. Pine’s debt?

7.       Why does Rhiannon help Marius find the rougarou, even though she doesn’t want him to hunt it?

8.       Other than math, why does Marius dislike school?

9.       How does Marius’s job as a cemetery boy help him in the story?

10.   Why doesn’t Marius want the adults in his life to know that he’s monster hunting?

11.   Why can children see ghosts and monsters, but adults can’t?

12.   Why do the High Mystics tolerate demons, but not monsters?

13.   How does Marius know that he can trust Rhiannon, even if she is a monster?

14.   Why does Mildred let Marius get away with stealing from Madame Millet?

15.   Why does Marius give Henry a rosary and worry beads after he captures the boo hag?