Kirkus Review: Curse of Sap River

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"The adventures, rescues, and three-part curse have excitement and unexpected twists, such as an aphid stampede."



The Curse of Sap River Featured in Kirkus Reviews

When The Curse of Sap River was first released, one of the most encouraging moments for the project came when the book was reviewed by Kirkus Reviews, a publication long known for evaluating new books across the publishing world.

Kirkus Reviews has been publishing professional book reviews since 1933 and is widely read by librarians, booksellers, and educators. For a small independent children’s book about orchard insects, appearing in Kirkus was a meaningful milestone.

The review highlighted the unusual perspective of the story—an adventure told entirely from the viewpoint of the bugs living in an orchard ecosystem. Instead of humans observing nature, the story invites readers to step into the world beneath the leaves, where apple trees become towering landscapes and everyday orchard life turns into an adventure.

The review also noted the book’s playful imagination and its attempt to combine a bug-sized adventure with real elements of orchard ecology. Lacewings, aphids, and other insects appear not simply as background creatures but as the characters who inhabit this tiny world.

For many independent authors, reviews like this play an important role. They provide outside feedback, introduce the work to librarians and educators, and place a new book into the larger conversation of children’s literature.

For The Curse of Sap River, the Kirkus review was another encouraging step for a story that began as a small idea about a lacewing in an orchard and eventually grew into a wider world of characters and adventures.

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