Hoodoo by Ronald L. Smith
Your name is Hoodoo and you can’t conjure? That’s crazy, if you didn’t know. And yet Hoodoo Hatcher cannot even cast a simple spell. He is told that he simply needs to believe, and he thinks he DOES believe, but… nothing! An itchy left hand hardly seems sufficient until he learns whose left hand it is and why the evil stranger wants to cut it off of him. While Mama Frances and black crows are there to help, Hoodoo will need his own strength to save the day.
Smith comes to the world of middle grade southern gothic horror writing (which is so much fun to write) from the world of selling cheeseburgers and other products for big ad companies. Hoodoo won the John Steptoe award for new talent from the Coretta Scott King committee at the American Library Association convention in January 2017. The Steptoe award is given to a new author (and illustrator), who has written an excellent book that should be celebrated and promoted. The actual language says: “The John Steptoe New Talent Award is established to affirm new talent and to offer visibility to excellence in writing and/or illustration which otherwise might be formally unacknowledged within a given year within the structure of the two awards given annually by the Coretta Scott King Task Force.” It seems to me that a southern gothic multicultural horror story fits that requirement perfectly, if you didn’t know!
What makes Hoodoo work so well is its setting. We are obviously in the south and it is sometime after 1890. The southern racist social structure is part and parcel of daily life: “‘It’s Colored Folks’ Day at the County fair,’ she said. They call it Colored Folks Day because that’s the only time we could go. If we tried to go any other time, we could get in trouble from white folks. I didn’t think that was right, but Mama Frances said that was the way of the world, and there was nothing we could do about it.” (p. 23) Yet this is a black community and whites have very little involvement in the daily details of life. The poverty in this poor Alabama community, set along the Alabama River, that will not be able to count on the white sheriff, adds an element of urgency to a story in which a mysterious stranger wants to kill a 12-year-old boy. Readers will find Squirrel Nut Zipper candies, “Silver Maple,” “Frisco 1062” train details, Pow-Wow — an arcane (but actual) spell book from 1828, and other odd details from Alabama in this time period (about 1820–1830). It is the genteel south but a stranger wants to kill you and cut off your left hand! And still you find yourself laughing fairly regularly because of Hoodoo’s very distinctive voice.
Gothic horror, humor, atmospheric setting, interesting historical details, and a plucky young protagonists navigating among adults who lie to him as much as they love him — what more do you want in a middle grade book? This book WILL surprise you because it also has an almost spiritual depth in which we must figure out how to both survive and forgive our family and friends. You should buy this book. The author has just announced that he has a three book deal with Houghton Mifflin,
so we will be seeing more of Ronald L. Smith, if you didn’t know. That makes me very happy!
Read this one and let me know what you think, please.
