Waiting on Wednesday--Texting the Underworld, by Ellen Booraem

Just a quick reminder, before I get to the Waiting part--you can win a personalized copy of Jinx, by Sage Blackwood, by leaving a comment on my interview with her by midnight tonight.  If you like middle grade fantasy and haven't read this one, do so posthaste.

Now on to a new book I'm waiting for!
 
Ellen Booraem has demonstrated with her first two books (The Unnamables, and Small Persons With Wings--my review) that she can write thoughtful and fun middle grade fantasy--and I'm very curious to see how her writing continues to evolve--those first two books are very different in feel!   So I'm looking forward to her forthcoming book, Texting the Underworld, lots.  It comes out August 15, 2013, from Dial. 

Here's the blurb:

Perpetual scaredy-cat Conor O'Neill has the fright of his life when a banshee girl named Ashling shows up in his bedroom. Ashling is--as all banshees are--a harbinger of death, but she's new at this banshee business, and first she insists on going to middle school. As Conor attempts to hide her identity from his teachers, he realizes he's going to have to pay a visit to the underworld if he wants to keep his family safe.

"Got your cell?"
"Yeah . . . . Don't see what good it'll do me."
"I'll text you if anything happens that you should know."
"Text me? Javier, we'll be in the afterlife."
"You never know. Maybe they get a signal."

Ellen Booraem has disclosed that there's a riff on the story of Orpheus and Eurydice here, which I might have guessed, what with the Underworld and all, but which certainly piques my interest more, fan of reimaginings that I am.

(I find it amusing that corvids seem to be continuing their popularity on mg and YA speculative fiction covers...which reminds me of a crow joke--What do call two crows hanging out together?  An attempted murder (as in "a murder of crows").

Waiting on Wednesday is a meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.