Theo Tan and the Fox Spirit

April 15, 2022
Grades 3-7 Sutanto's latest middle-grade fantasy is, at its core, about a boy finding his power by connecting to his heritage. Chinese American Theo Tan lives with his family in San Francisco's Chinatown. All he wants is to be a normal American boy, but when his older brother dies under mysterious circumstances, Theo must partner with his brother's mischievous fox spirit, named Kai, and set out on a quest to find answers. Sutanto blends Chinese culture and history to build a world of dragons, demons, spell casting, and code breaking. The story is told via two different points of view, jumping between Theo's and Kai's perspectives. Kai is a witty and snarky character, often describing the magical world through footnotes and commentary, reminiscent of Bartimaeus in Jonathan Stroud's The Amulet of Samarkand (2003). This is a natural choice for kids who like Rick Riordan's brand of mythology-fueled fantasy adventures, and it will be an especially good read-alike for Laurence Yep's classic Tiger's Apprentice series, another action-packed fantasy with a distinct Asian perspective that pairs ancient Chinese mythology with modern San Francisco.

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May 9, 2022
Twelve-year-old Theo Tan and his two-tailed shape-shifting fox spirit companion Kai must work together to solve the mystery of his brother’s death in Sutanto’s (The New Girl) Chinese-mythology-rich middle grade debut. In a futuristic San Francisco in which expensive cirth magic, which is bought and stockpiled in pendants, dominates daily life, Theo “hate that I’m a Chinese American kid who lives in Chinatown.” He isn’t like his hardworking, proudly Chinese American older brother Jamie, who’s a cultural outreach intern at Reapling Corp., the U.S.’s largest cirth supplier. After Jamie dies in a car accident, Theo inherits his brother’s acerbic spirit companion, Kai, with whom Theo’s never gotten along. When they uncover Jamie’s coded notebook, which implicates Reapling in his death, the pair reluctantly work together to solve the mystery by infiltrating the company via its prestigious cultural outreach summer program. In Theo and Kai’s alternating perspectives, Sutanto weaves the duo’s shared grief and path to healing with Theo’s journey toward embracing his Chinese heritage in this rewarding fantasy adventure. Ages 8–12. Agent: Katelyn Detweiler, Jill Grinberg Literary Management.

June 1, 2022

Gr 4-7-Twelve-year-old Theo is crushed when his beloved older brother, Jamie, suddenly dies in a tragic accident. To make matters worse, the spirit companion summoned for him shortly afterward turns out to be Kai, the duplicitous, self-important fox spirit who was formerly Jamie's companion. Soon Theo discovers clues from Jamie suggesting something's not quite right at Reapling Corp, the company where Jamie was interning when he died (Reapling has monetized magical energy; think of them as the Google or Apple of spellcasting). To investigate, Theo will have to earn a spot in Reapling's competitive summer program by leaning in to his Chinese-American heritage and relying on some help and trickery from Kai. This action-packed fantasy should have wide appeal. Sutanto creates a sense of urgency from the first page, when Theo is dragged out of bed to a meat locker in Chinatown for a sketchy conversation with Jamie just before he dies. Alternating viewpoints between Theo and Kai fully flesh out the characters' overlapping (and sometimes deviating) desires. Moments of comic relief are scattered throughout, as when Theo's spells go awry due to his mispronunciation of Mandarin. And though Theo's story largely relies on Chinese gods and monsters, Sutanto deftly weaves in reminders that this is only one of a great many distinct cultures in Asia. VERDICT A welcome addition to fantasy shelves, hand this off to readers who can't get enough of "Percy Jackson" or the Rick Riordan Presents series.-Lindsay Loup

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July 1, 2022
Theo Tan is more into gaming than studying his Chinese heritage and learning to access his qi -- that's his older brother Jamie's thing. But after Jamie pulls Theo aside one morning for a mystifying conversation about computer game quests, and then dies in a car accident, leaving Theo his fox spirit companion, Kai, and a coded notebook full of clues, Theo determines to find out what his brother was trying to tell him. His search leads him to the "Know Your Roots" summer youth program conducted by Jamie's former employer, Reapling Corporation, purveyor of the "cirth" that everyone uses to power their magic, but Theo can't pass the stringent entry exam. Clever Kai helps him cheat to get in, but doing so tilts Kai away from spirit and toward demon, and now the two guards of the underworld, Ox Head and Horse Face, are eager to drag her down to Diyu. Chinese cosmology (and to a lesser extent, Indian cosmology, since Know Your Roots features both) star in this Riordan-esque adventure set in an alternate San Francisco, where magic is prevalent but so is prejudice (Theo refuses to speak Mandarin after being teased in kindergarten; his reconnection with his heritage is one of the story's strengths). Readers dependent on their own technological devices might take a lesson from the book's message about finding resources within -- or perhaps they'll just enjoy this engrossing mystery set among ancient Chinese spirit grudges and modern-day corporate malfeasance. Anita L. Burkam

(Copyright 2022 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2022
Theo Tan is more into gaming than studying his Chinese heritage and learning to access his qi -- that's his older brother Jamie's thing. But after Jamie pulls Theo aside one morning for a mystifying conversation about computer game quests, and then dies in a car accident, leaving Theo his fox spirit companion, Kai, and a coded notebook full of clues, Theo determines to find out what his brother was trying to tell him. His search leads him to the "Know Your Roots" summer youth program conducted by Jamie's former employer, Reapling Corporation, purveyor of the "cirth" that everyone uses to power their magic, but Theo can't pass the stringent entry exam. Clever Kai helps him cheat to get in, but doing so tilts Kai away from spirit and toward demon, and now the two guards of the underworld, Ox Head and Horse Face, are eager to drag her down to Diyu. Chinese cosmology (and to a lesser extent, Indian cosmology, since Know Your Roots features both) star in this Riordan-esque adventure set in an alternate San Francisco, where magic is prevalent but so is prejudice (Theo refuses to speak Mandarin after being teased in kindergarten; his reconnection with his heritage is one of the story's strengths). Readers dependent on their own technological devices might take a lesson from the book's message about finding resources within -- or perhaps they'll just enjoy this engrossing mystery set among ancient Chinese spirit grudges and modern-day corporate malfeasance.

(Copyright 2022 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)