Excerpts Young Adult Read an Excerpt From Ruinous Ends by I.V. Marie The future of Blackwood Academy—and the entire afterlife—is at stake. By I.V. Marie | Published on June 25, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Ruinous Ends by I.V. Marie, the second book in the YA dark fantasy Souls of Blackwood Academy trilogy—publishing with Delacorte Press on July 14th. The Decennial is over, but for the students of Blackwood Academy, the fight for the afterlife has just begun.The infamous school was hiding more secrets—and lies—than any of the Decennial’s participants could have imagined. And there’s still so much that remains buried beneath its ancient foundations. Now the future of the academy, and all the souls within it, rests in the hands of six former pupils:The charmer and the golden boy…The traitor and the girl desperate to save her…The Chosen One and the one who would choose her over and over again…Any of them could be the hero the afterlife needs… or the villain who will destroy it for good. Because the truth is, Blackwood’s biggest secret has yet to come to light—and when it does, it will shake the institution to its core. Buy the Book Ruinous Ends I.V. Marie Buy Book Ruinous Ends I.V. Marie Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Augustine Hughes was losing his mind. Time had become a fickle and unstable thing; it drifted through his fingers like the remnants of a bad dream. There were moments of clarity—breaths of hope among the rot filling his lungs—but it was never enough to drag him back to reality. The darkness was too hungry. The poison too thick. It was almost comical, the absurdity of it all. Losing his mind in the afterlife. He would have thought the worst of his troubles were behind him once he had died. Yet there he was, wandering the outskirts of purgatory, mind fragmented, whispering to the darkness like a madman. He was mad, wasn’t he? August laughed and the sound grated against his skin. He was fairly certain he was lying on the dirt floor, though it was impossible to tell. The only thing he was truly certain of was the agony. It filled every crevice of his soul. Every ligament and bone. Every atom of his being. How long had he been like this? The last thing he could remember was Wren’s voice dripping into his mind, warm and inviting, and then… fury. An anger he had never known possible. Everything blurred after that, twisting together until all semblance of reality had lost its meaning. And now all he knew was this torture… this suffering. Old memories flickered through his vision like a sun-damaged film reel, vignettes of a life that was no longer his. August watched as a group of strangers slowly lowered his mother’s body into the ground. Next to him, his sister sobbed. She gripped August’s wrist as though she might float away if she let go. As if he were the only thing tethering her to the earth. Behind them, their father remained silent. He had not wept for his wife, and August was certain he never would. Why would he? He was the one who’d killed her, after all. The memory fluttered away, drifting like morning fog, replaced by another. “We must do something,” Edith pleaded, red-rimmed eyes brimming with desperation. They were standing in the garden, hidden beneath the shadows of night. Above them, their father’s study window glowed amber. “What are you suggesting?” August asked, fearing her answer. Edith’s gaze drifted to the window, her face torn between sorrow and rage. “We can make it look like an accident.” ”Edith,” August whispered. “You mustn’t say things like that—” But his sister interjected, cutting him off. “Her death was no accident, Augustine. We both know this.” Edith stepped closer, her dark eyes blazing beneath the light of her lantern. “Do you truly believe she simply fell down the stairs? After everything we’ve seen? Everything we’ve heard?” “How will we be any different if we do to him what he did to her?” August challenged. “What he did was murder.” The word spoken out loud, with such candor, sent a chill down August’s spine. “This… this is vengeance.” ”But… what if something happens?” he asked, voice shaking. “What about your soul?” ”My soul?” Edith chuckled, though her smile dropped when she saw the sincerity in her brother’s eyes. “Oh, Augustine. Do not fear for my soul. It is in nobody’s hands but mine.” When August didn’t budge, Edith let out a long and weighted sigh. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say these things out loud. I just need some rest.” August stepped closer, carefully inspecting his sister. ”Are you certain?” “Yes, little brother.” Clearly sensing August’s apprehension, Edith reached out and wrapped him in an embrace, whispering the next words into his ear. “I promise.” But when she hugged August, he felt her heart hammering in her chest, her pulse beating like the frenetic wings of a hummingbird. And though he could not see his sister’s face… he knew exactly what she was staring at. He knew her eyes were locked on that study window. August tried desperately to cling to the memory, but it faded before he could watch what happened next, drifting within the invisible current. A new one took its place from one breath to the next. The one he had tried so desperately to forget. The door to the kitchen was ajar. August took a step inside, peering around the corner. His sister didn’t notice him at first, her lips lifted into a serene and placid smile as she poured a cup of tea. When he stepped forward, the old wood creaked beneath his weight and his sister’s head snapped up in surprise. ”Augustine. I thought you were asleep.” “I was.” He approached the counter, rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes. “But I heard you down here.” “Go back to bed.” Edith set the teacup on a tray, stirring the liquid inside with a silver spoon. “Father is in one of his moods. It is best you stay in your room and out of his way.” “Is that for him?” “Chamomile tea with a splash of rye and valerian.” She winked, stepping around the counter. “I am hopeful it will be enough to calm his nerves and send him to sleep.” “Let me come with you—” ”No;’ Edith interjected, pausing beneath the doorway. ”If he lashes out, I’d rather it be me than you.” She offered him an apologetic smile. “Please, Augustine. Just go to bed.” August conceded with a nod and watched as Edith made her way upstairs, her footsteps receding. He was moments away from walking back to his bedroom when he noticed the empty glass vial on the counter. He picked it up, lifting it toward one of the iron sconces lining the walls. The label had been partially scratched off, but he could just make out the writing. Squinting, he read what was written upon the vial. Arsenic. And Edith had poured the entire bottle into their father’s tea. August scrambled out of the kitchen, running up the stairs so fast he nearly slipped, barely catching himself on the railing. He gasped, picking up his pace, panic clouding his judgment. And before he could stop himself, before he could even decipher what he was about to do, he stumbled into his father’s study. Edith stood next to their father, a hand on his shoulder. He had lifted the teacup to his lips and begun to take a sip when August first stepped into the room. Upon seeing August, their father froze, the edge of the teacup pressed against his mouth. ”Augustine…” Edith’s face contorted in confusion. ”I thought I said to—” Her voice caught in her throat when she noticed the glass vial in her brother’s hand. She tried to hide her reaction, quickly averting her gaze, but it was too late. Their father had noticed. “Come here,” he instructed, motioning August forward. ”Hand me that.” What happened next, August couldn’t quite remember. The memory sped up and slowed down, warping like a funhouse mirror. The scene jolted, staccato, each moment flashing from one heartbeat to the next. His father realizing what had been poured into his tea. His hands gripping Edith’s neck. August slamming his fists against their father’s back. The unfathomable pain as his father threw him to the floor and snapped his leg in half. Edith removing the knife in her waistcoat and plunging it into their father’s back. Their father screaming like a wild animal as he ripped the knife out. The look on Edith’s face when her own father brought the same knife down upon her. In that moment, the memory came rushing back in with unwavering clarity. The knife had sliced clean through Edith’s abdomen. She fell to the floor, hands clutching her stomach, blood seeping through her fingers. August’s reaction was instinctual. Primal. He tackled his father, pushing him onto his desk, sending a candle tumbling to the floor. The curtain closest to the desk caught fire. The flames ate away at the fabric, inch by inch. Beneath August, his father had hardened into stone. Mouth agape. Eyes wide. August pushed himself away from his father, collapsing as the pain from his leg took hold. Next to him on the floor, Edith lay motionless, her vacant eyes staring up at the ceiling, the ghost of a smile on her lips. August dragged himself toward her, screaming out in agony as his broken leg arched unnaturally behind him. Around him, the fire grew. It devoured everything in its path—the bookcases, the piles of notebooks, the old wallpaper. Black smoke rushed into August’s lungs. He coughed, sputtering, choking helplessly. There were two options. Two conclusions to his story. He could attempt to pull himself out of the study, to somehow drag himself down the stairs and out of the house. Or… he could stay there. He could end their story, once and for all, and burn. The decision, however, was never truly his to make. It was in that moment that a dizziness came over him. Whether it was from shock or his wound, he didn’t know. All he knew was that he was unable to move. His head slammed against the floorboards, as though he had been knocked to the floor by an invisible weight. Smoke clouded his vision. Through the haze, he swore he saw someone standing on the other side of the room… watching. But before he could properly understand what he was looking at, the flames swallowed him whole. And then… darkness. * * * August opened his eyes and found he was lying in a cave. He blinked, attempting to make sense of where he was. Beneath him, streaks of blood glistened against the rocky floor. It wasn’t until he glanced down at his hands, the raw blisters scattered across his palms healing at a rapid speed, that he understood the blood must be his own. That he must have dragged himself into the cave, crawling on his hands and knees in the throes of delirium, until he found a place to rest his eyes. But now that he had clawed his way back to reality, the weight of his situation fell upon him like a guillotine. “My humanity…” August croaked, his voice rough from days spent screaming, drowning under memories. Now he remembered. He had carved out his humanity. He had opened the locked door and invited the shadows inside, sealing his fate. The tidal wave of memories made sense now—he could remember hearing about this happening to others within the Order… a sort of purging. Days spent writhing in pain, subjected to horrifying hallucinations after removing their humanity. But just to be certain, August reached a trembling hand toward his chest, slowly unbuttoning his shirt until his bare torso was visible. Even shrouded in the darkness of the cave, there was no avoiding what now swam through his veins like venom. Shadows. August cursed and pressed his head back against the cave wall. His chest shuddered with every panicked breath, terror sinking into his bones. This was exactly what he had tried so hard to avoid… what he had been desperate to shield himself from. The shadows had poisoned his sister, turning her into something unrecognizable, into a monster. And now he would meet the same fate. With his humanity gone, August would never be able to cross over to the Other Side. And if he allowed himself to use the shadow magic he now had access to—if he truly succumbed to the shadows—he’d lose himself. Just like Edith. The more shadow magic he used, the less him he would be. More shadow than human. But he would do it again. He would do it ten times over if it meant saving Wren. If it meant keeping his promise. Find me. Wherever you are, wherever we end up, don’t stop looking for me. August gathered himself onto his feet, bracing himself against the walls of the cave. Next to him, a shadow coiled around his wrist, its movement almost shy. Despite the nausea wrapping around his throat, August didn’t push it away. He welcomed it, letting it travel across his palm, slithering up and down his arm in delight. Instantly, a coldness swept through his body. An unnerving chill. August knew the truth now, the inescapable verity sowed into his soul. He had thought he could run from it, that he could somehow trick the hand of fate into believing he was worth loving, into believing he was worth something. But August wasn’t the hero. He was broken and tarnished and wretched. And Wren… Wren was the cosmos. She was the very stars themselves. So—he would do anything to save her from the destruction he had caused. Even if it pained him. Even if it destroyed him. He would save her… even if it cost him his soul. Excerpted from Ruinous Ends, copyright © 2026 by I.V. Marie. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Ruinous Ends</i> by I.V. Marie appeared first on Reactor.

Books Teen Horror Time Machine Fears and Cheers: The Scream Team  Gimme a D – E – A – T – H !!! By Alissa Burger | Published on June 25, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share For many readers, R.L. Stine’s Cheerleaders trilogy (1992) and its follow up, The New Evil (1994) are some of the most memorable books of the ‘90s teen horror cycle, featuring a supernatural evil that possesses the bodies of the Shadyside High Cheerleaders, turning them against one another with fatal results. But the members of the Shadyside squad weren’t the only cheerleaders fighting for their lives. In her 1993 Nightmare Hall book The Scream Team, Diane Hoh upped the competition to the college level, with the terrifying ordeal of Salem University students trying to win a spot on the junior varsity cheer team. Competition for Salem University’s JV squad is fierce, with nearly seventy competitors vying for a total of eight spots (six cheerleaders and two alternates). All of the students who are trying out were cheerleaders in high school and some of them, like protagonist Delle Arlen, were team captains, and the skill level is high across the board, from cheers to stunts. For most of the competitors, being a cheerleader is a core part of their identity and there’s nothing they want more than to make the Salem University cheer squad. On the first day of tryouts, “They’d come hopefully across the grass toward the old Peabody Gym, some sleepy, some clearly early risers, all trying to look like they were The Ones. Winners. The Cheerleaders To Be” (2).  And it’s not just the students trying out who are intense: the competition is a week-long bootcamp style experience, with the potential cheerleaders all relocated from their dorms across campus so they can live together in Abbey House, either as a team-building activity or as a kind of hazing, designed to find out who is really willing to give up whatever they need to to dedicate their lives to cheerleading. There’s a new coach this year as well, Coach Truite, and her expectations of the cheerleaders are similarly demanding, as she sets the tone on the first day of tryouts by telling them that “Cheerleading is not about popularity or looks or partying. It is a sport” (3, emphasis original), and she expects them to take it as seriously as any other athlete on campus.  Cheerleading is all-encompassing in The Scream Team. The school year seems to be underway at Salem University: all of the students are moved in, life around campus is pretty bustling, and when tryout week is capped off with a public competition, the gym is packed. But the students trying out for the cheerleading team do NOTHING but focus on the tryouts. They don’t go to class, they don’t see any of their non-cheerleader friends, they don’t do any extracurricular activities, they don’t call home and chat with their families about how things are going. They are together in workouts for several hours each day, spend their free time together in the evenings, and all live together. This tryout process is insular, isolating, and a bit unsettling in and of itself: if a person makes a spot on the cheerleading squad, they are clearly expected to continue this pattern, devoting themselves to ALL cheerleading ALL the time.  There are only two cheerleaders returning to the junior varsity team from the previous year, Marla Pines and Rory Hanahama, and they could not be more different from one another. Marla is constantly bullying the competitors, while Rory is more encouraging and supportive. Another former cheerleader, Jennifer Li, is helping out with the tryouts but has opted not to return to the team, after an accident that left her on crutches. And it turns out this accident is the reason that the junior varsity team is basically rebuilding from the ground up: aside from Marla, Rory, and Jennifer, all of the former cheerleaders are dead. A few months earlier, the cheerleading team was “returning from the annual Regional Cheerleading Camp and Competition at the end of June. The new junior varsity team, chosen last spring, had done very well. The bus in which they were riding apparently skidded out of control” (15). Marla and Rory were the only two cheerleaders not on the bus (Marla had left the competition early with the flu and Rory had caught a ride with some friends); Jennifer was on the bus but was thrown clear and miraculously survived. While most people consider what happened a tragic accident, Marla disagrees, insisting that “the Salem junior varsity was murdered” (13, emphasis original). There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that this was the case, aside from the inconclusive finding that “The police said they ‘couldn’t rule out the possibility that someone had tampered with the brakes’” (14), but Marla is adamant that someone was out to get the cheerleaders.  And as tryouts continue, it starts to look like she just might be on to something. No one knows for sure whether someone wanted to hurt the cheerleaders who were killed in the bus accident, but someone is definitely targeting the potential new squad. Someone sets a fire in the trashcan in Delle’s room while she’s sleeping, a basketball backboard falls in the gym near where the cheerleaders are practicing, a bloody doll and a threatening note are left in one girl’s room, and a stunt harness is tampered with, which results in another competitor being badly injured. As the danger mounts, it becomes abundantly clear that there is a legitimate threat to the would-be cheerleaders, but the source of this threat remains a mystery. It could be the same person who allegedly targeted the cheerleaders over the summer, resulting in the fatal bus accident, or it could be one of the students trying out, who wants to make the team so badly that they’ll do whatever it takes to eliminate some of the competition. Or it could be The Red Lady. The Red Lady (also frequently referred to as the Lady in Red) is a Salem University campus legend. A girl named Mojo (short for Morgana) is trying out for the squad and just happens to be well versed in the supernatural, happy to tell Delle all about the Red Lady. The Red Lady is a staple of Salem University history, dating back to the early 1900s, when there was a tragic fire in the girls’ gym. As Mojo explains, “the old gym, which was also called Peabody Gym, burned down […] And one of the girls who was in it got trapped and couldn’t get out. So now she like appears, y’know? When something terrible is going to happen” (18). Rumor has it that the Red Lady was seen shortly before the former cheerleaders’ fatal accident, glimpsed through the gym windows. Delle encounters the Red Lady when she wakes up to find the fire in her room, seeing “A tall translucent figure in flowing red garments. Garments that moved eerily in the steadily increasing flame” (21). Late one night, Delle sees a similar figure through the windows of the Peabody Gym, though when she goes to investigate, the woman disappears. The motivation and significance of the Red Lady is just as mysterious as who is behind the attacks during cheerleading tryouts, but one thing is certain: it’s definitely NOT a good sign if you see her.  While Coach Truite emphasizes the importance of teamwork above all else, the cheerleaders have a difficult time coming together as a team, because they can’t help suspecting one another, as they try to figure out who’s behind all the terrible things that have been happening. Marla is angry and suspicious of everyone, but is also one of the only ones who wasn’t on the bus when it crashed, which automatically makes her a suspect. While Rory is kinder, the same is true of him, though why the survivors—who are now co-captains of the squad—would want to target the new cheerleaders is a bit of a mystery. Jennifer is traumatized by her near-death experience and no longer cheering, so she could be driven by jealousy or revenge. And none of the new potential cheerleaders are above suspicion: they’re all used to being superstars on their high school teams, they all believe they deserve a spot on the Salem University junior varsity squad, and they’re all willing to do just about whatever it takes to claim one.  The only person no one really suspects when it comes to the accidents is Coach Truite and really, that’s because the competitors are busy thinking she’s terrible for a whole host of other reasons, including the grueling workouts and her constant screaming at them. But it turns out that the coach is really just out to torment and punish them before she kills them. This is Truite’s first year as a coach at Salem University, a job she took specifically to get revenge. Her younger brother, Reginald Trout, was one of the cheerleaders who died in the bus crash. (As one of the cheerleaders helpfully points out, “truite” is French for “trout,” which doesn’t seem like much of a subterfuge, but then again, no one actually says the names of the cheerleaders who were killed in the accident until after the tryouts are over, so maybe she didn’t even need to go to that much trouble. Aside from Marla, Rory, and Jennifer, no one would have recognized poor Reginald’s name). Coach Truite trained her brother; as she tells the terrified cheerleaders, “I taught him gymnastics. I taught him everything. And then he came here. I didn’t want him to leave. I didn’t want him to go away. It isn’t safe out there, I told him […] And then he was killed. So I came here. To punish. To pay back. To make you all suffer as he suffered” (159). Coach Truite terrorizes the would-be cheerleaders throughout the tryout process, enjoying their pain and fear, but in the end, it’s bigger than the team and she wants to make as many people pay as possible.  The new members of the junior varsity cheerleading team are announced at the memorial service for the cheerleaders who died, which is the most horrifying element of The Scream Team, as the university publicly acknowledges the dead while turning the event into a celebration of the new cheerleaders who are literally going to take their places. Coach Truite does a lot of over-the-top and terrifying things throughout the book, but her anger about this feels pretty justifiable. Salem University is paying lip-service to her dead brother and his teammates, before immediately turning around and essentially erasing and replacing them. There doesn’t seem to be any logical reason for this insensitive combination, and even the new cheerleaders are uncomfortable with this set up. Joy, one of the new team members says “It makes me feel funny, though, you know? I mean, being presented as the new cheerleaders and all” (149) at the memorial service for those who died. Mojo weighs in with a dry humor: “‘I’m sure they’ll be extremely tactful about it,’ said Mojo in a voice that said NOT” (149, emphasis original). The prevailing feeling is that this is an inappropriate combination of events, but no one speaks up or stops it. As a result, it is fitting that Coach Truite’s revenge takes place at the memorial service and targets the larger campus community, not just the cheerleaders. Immediately following the announcement of the new cheerleaders, she locks the doors and sets the gym on fire, looking forward to watching them all burn as she triumphantly screams “You’re all going to DIE!” (156).  Cheerleading got them all into this mess and it’s cheerleading that gets them out. As everyone in the gym panics, Delle cheers them back into order, with spirited impromptu instructions: “SALEM U, SALEM U! THIS IS WHAT WE’RE GOING TO DO! DON’T PANIC, STAND STILL, DON’T PANIC, STAND STILL” (154). The other cheerleaders pick up the chant and it does calm the crowd, which at least prevents people from being trampled and crushed against the locked doors, but thank goodness the fire department shows up on the scene quickly, because this is not a viable survival strategy. Delle tries to talk some sense into Coach Truite, but the woman is beyond help, driven mad by her grief, and plunges into the flames, the only casualty of the Peabody Gym fire.  And as for the Red Lady? Well, it turns out everyone has had her wrong all along: she’s not a menacing harbinger of doom, but more of a benevolently protective warning system. As Mojo explains, the Red Lady is nothing to be afraid of, “A ghost who wasn’t a messenger of death, but trying to save a life” (163). When she appeared before the other cheerleaders’ accident, showed up in Delle’s room, and was spotted in the Peabody Gym during tryout week, she was trying to warn and protect people, not harm them. She died in the old Peabody Gym and as the new(er) one goes up in flames, it seems like the Red Lady will disappear along with it. As Delle reflects, “‘She’s at peace now’ […] The Lady in Red wouldn’t need to haunt this world anymore” (164).  While the cheerleaders’ current nightmare has been laid to rest, this feels pretty optimistic: weird stuff is always happening at Salem University, whether through human action or supernatural shenanigans, and it seems like there would be plenty to keep a protective spirit well occupied for the foreseeable future. But maybe the Red Lady is tied to the gym specifically and as long as they don’t build ANOTHER Peabody Gym, the poor girl can rest in peace. Or maybe she’s the spectral guardian angel of cheerleaders specifically and it’s smooth sailing for the team from here on out. As long as the next coach the university brings on doesn’t have a murderous vendetta against the team, there seems to be brighter days ahead for the Salem University junior varsity team. That’s definitely something worth cheering about.[end-mark] The post Fears and Cheers: <em>The Scream Team</em>  appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Interviews Louise Bagnall Discusses the Magic of Her New Animated Film Julián From the studio behind The Secret of Kells and Wolfwalkers, a new adaptation of a modern children’s book classic. By Reuben Baron | Published on June 25, 2026 Image: Cartoon Saloon Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Cartoon Saloon It’s always exciting to see a new film from Cartoon Saloon, the Irish animation studio behind Wolfwalkers, Song of the Sea, and The Breadwinner (the good one, not the Nate Bargatze one). Their latest, Julián, is something special even by the studio’s high standards. Based on the children’s book Julián is a Mermaid by Jessica Love, the story follows an imaginative mermaid-obsessed boy (voiced by Knyght Darius Jack) over an unforgettable summer with his Abuela (Milcania Diaz-Rojas), exploring issues of identity with a light touch and a dose of magic. It’s a movie I can’t imagine being made by any of the Hollywood studios right now, and it’s one that could change and possibly even save gender-nonconforming kids’ lives. Ahead of Julián’s world premiere at the 2026 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, I got to speak with the film’s director, Louise Bagnall, on developing the characters and setting, the importance of telling this story now, and how Hayao Miyazaki movies inspired the film’s use of fantasy. Reuben Baron: Julián is a Mermaid is a very short book. How did you approach adapting the concept with enough drama and character development to make it a feature? Louise Bagnall: It is quite a slim book, but I think what’s interesting about the book is, firstly, I think the characters themselves are quite believable. There’s something expressive and sensitive about the way they’re drawn and the way they express themselves, and I think the way the story’s told also has a depth underneath the surface. Even though there’s only a few words, I think it leaves room for the reader to project a lot of interpretation or bring a lot of their own understanding into the book, and I think for me, that showed me that there was potential there to go into a bigger deeper story and expand. But it was a big job, looking at what would work, because we didn’t want to break the tone or lose the appeal of the characters when we expanded it. First thing we did was we took what was one afternoon and put it across the whole summer, so rather than one short time frame, we had a longer timeframe to get to know our characters. The other thing was we had Julián arriving at Abuela’s doorstep at the beginning of the film. That allowed us to get to know him, but also get to know her as they get to know each other, so it allowed us as the audience to come into the story in a more organic way, and as their relationship is developing, we get to see that. So that was some of the things that we did to make that work, and of course expanding the scope, so we get to dive into Brooklyn a little bit more. We get to see who’s on the block, we get to meet the community that lives there in the neighborhood, we get to explore the deli nearby and stuff like that. What was nice about that was getting to make Brooklyn sort of a character in the film as well. RB: I’m speaking to you from Bushwick. This is a great Brooklyn film. Did you come here a lot for research? I assume a lot of the authenticity comes from the screenwriter, juliany tavernas. LB: Absolutely. So juliany obviously grew up in Brooklyn with Dominican heritage, so that did inform a lot of how the scenes played out and what we would see of Brooklyn and things like that. But also we did do a research trip there in 2019, which was only a few days but we got to explore a little bit of Brooklyn. It wasn’t long enough at all to explore Brooklyn, but then COVID came, so that was the end of being able to go over and explore in person. So we did a lot of research online and we talked to people, we had cultural consultants who were able to talk about growing up in New York and as part of the [Dominican] diaspora. We were trying to not just look at Brooklyn in isolation in terms of architecture or anything like that, but what is it like to live in? What do the plastic bags look like that you get from the shopkeeper? We were trying to look at all the mundane details as well as the impressive obvious details. We were trying to get what it feels like to actually live there and try and bring that into the film. RB: Between this and Robot Dreams, there’s like a mini-trend of the best New York animated films coming from Europe. LB: (laughs) I think you need a few more animation studios in New York, that’s what you need. The reason we set it there was primarily because that’s where the book was set, but it’s a very rich and wonderful place to set a film. RB: So you’ve been working on this since before COVID. In that time, it feels like things have gotten more dangerous for kids like Julián. The book’s one of the most banned picture books in America. Has the darkening cultural climate impacted anything about the production of this film, which is really such a ray of sunshine we need? LB: It didn’t really change what we were trying to achieve with the film, because I think we always felt this could be a really exciting film to have out in the world no matter what the climate was. Also, a really interesting, fun, and meaningful film. It didn’t really change how we thought about the film or what we did with the film, but I suppose it underlined that more than ever we wanted to get this film made. Even more than I thought before, I really do want this film to exist for kids and for everybody else as well. And it is a film that is trying to talk about something that’s more joyful and hopeful, and I think that’s helpful, actually. I think people need that too. RB: Cartoon Saloon and all your co-production partners were supportive of this, right? LB: Yeah, they’re very much on board. RB: I think of what happened to Elio, where big changes were made to the main character because the studio feared him appearing too gay. LB: With a film like what we were making, it’s pretty clear what the film is gonna be like based on the book, so I don’t think there was ever any ambiguity about what we were trying to achieve. And being in Europe and working with co-production partners including in Canada, it also means that there’s a lot of interest in telling these kinds of stories. I think people also just really wanted a positive story that wasn’t as heavy. I think that’s needed. RB: So there’s a lot that people can read into the character of Julián, and it’s kind of brilliant how the film’s able to speak to so much without necessarily the need for labels. So now I am going to do something silly and ask about a label. LB: (laughs) RB: Did you envision Julián as autistic or neurodivergent? I ask because I’m autistic and the way he approaches his special interest in ocean life reminded me a lot of how I was with my special interests at that age. LB: I’m gonna resist the label because it would be doing a disservice to the film to label Julián in any particular direction, but I know that for a lot of people on the crew, they also felt this connection to Julián on the same basis. I think a lot of kids do have very special interests, hyperfocusing on things like that. I wouldn’t define it one way or the other, but I definitely wanted the film to be something that was accessible for a lot of people, but also that they could see themselves in Julián’s journey in a lot of different directions. I think there is a lot of relatability there across a lot of different cohorts. He’s really a kid who’s trying to express himself the best way he can and trying to figure out who he wants to be in the world and how he wants other people to see him, so I think for a lot of us, a lot of people, that’s something we’ve all been through as kids and in some way, shape, or form. I want the film to connect across a lot of people and see themselves in him. RB: So how many times did you watch Ponyo when designing the underwater fantasy sequences? LB: Well, I do love Ponyo, I will be honest. The other film I thought about a fair bit in terms of Miyazaki’s work was Totoro, even though it’s less obvious in the visual style and motifs, but in terms of the storytelling; I thought about how to tell a story without a villain, how to tell a story that’s got complex characters. We did look at Ponyo in terms of something people might not think about as much, but to me, Ponyo has quite an interesting style that’s different from a lot of the other Ghibli films. There’s this very pastel-y crayon-y look to the world, as well as the kind of flat cel-shaded kind of characters, so we actually looked at how to combine more textural elements in our backgrounds with more flat cel-shaded elements. If you look at some of the backgrounds in Julián, you’ll see very marker/colored pencil objects next to something that’s very “animate-like”—it looks like it might be animated even if it doesn’t move. That’s just getting into the details a bit, but I do love Ponyo and the creatures [and] the magic you can feel in Ponyo, and I really wanted Julián’s journey to include magic and adventure. RB: Now that you bring up Totoro, I’m thinking the other similarity is how the magic works, where it’s ambiguous whether it could be real or in the kids’ imagination at first, but by the end, it doesn’t make sense if it’s not real. LB: Exactly. I thought about that quite a bit with Julián where his imagination is part of the world we’re seeing, because the film is his point of view in terms of his perspective on the world, his feeling about the world. He’s excited about discovering Brooklyn, he’s curious about it. He sees the world in a very colorful way and his imagination is part of how he sees the world. Even though parts of it are more clearly imagination, while some are more ambiguous if they’re real or not, I wanted it to be something that for him, it’s real. It’s all real, whether it’s imagination or magic, it’s real for him. I wanted that to be there for the audience too. RB: How did you approach the Abuela’s story? Her story is interesting because we don’t know a lot about her past, but we know enough that what we see is emotionally impactful. LB: One of the really wonderful things in the film was looking into Abuela’s life and trying to figure out how we were going to tell her story onscreen and how it would relate to Julián’s story, so we would have this back-and-forth. It’s not one way or another, it’s informing one another, and they’re learning and growing because of their relationship together. I love her backstory because we tried versions where we got into much more detail about her history, but we found that actually by giving the impression or evoking the feelings that she felt about her past, as an audience, you connect more with how she feels about it. You don’t need to know all the details, and I think a lot of us would take a good guess at what’s going on with her. For me, a wonderful part of it was being able to look at her as a character and dive into her world a little bit and how that informs Julián and how he understands who she is. RB: What has Zoe Saldaña’s involvement been like? LB: It’s been great to have Zoe come onboard. Considering her and her sisters’ backgrounds growing up in America with Dominican heritage, and they also spent some of their teenage years in the Dominican Republic, having her come onboard was really fantastic as a way of understanding that we had connected with the audience we wanted to connect with. She could see in the writing and the way we were telling our story that we were trying to tell a sensitive story, but one that was also culturally authentic, so it was really wonderful having her come on and basically just lift up the project. She felt that it spoke to her and to her sisters and they felt that it was something they could connect with and they could recognize people that they knew within the characters. It’s not like we were looking for approval, but it’s been a wonderful way of uplifting the project and giving it that extra support that we need for the film.[end-mark] The post Louise Bagnall Discusses the Magic of Her New Animated Film <i>Julián</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books reading recommendations Five Ways to Get Transported to Other Worlds That Don’t Involve Getting Hit by a Truck Before isekai began ramming people into other dimensions, classic SFF tried out some other weird strategies… By James Davis Nicoll | Published on June 25, 2026 The Compleat Enchanter cover art by Greg Hildebrandt and Tim Hildebrandt Comment 0 Share New Share The Compleat Enchanter cover art by Greg Hildebrandt and Tim Hildebrandt Japan has greatly advanced the field of interdimensional travel. Even more impressively, they’ve done so using that most mundane of transportation technologies, the truck. If anime, manga, and light novels are to be believed, one can hardly step blindly into traffic without being immediately transported to some other world… Alas, in the West, the only places to which truck-kun will deliver you is the emergency department or the graveyard. Therefore, Western SF authors have turned to a wide variety of means by which one can step from this boring, mundane world into exciting realms of adventure (and maybe death). Consider these venerable examples. Retrograde Reincarnation — “Time and Time Again” by H. Beam Piper (1947) Allan Harley is mortally wounded during the 1975 siege of Buffalo, one of many victims of an enemy atomic bomb. Medics cannot save him, only administer enough drugs to spare Allan unnecessary pain. There is no future for Allan. There is, however, a past. Allan wakes in 1945, with all the memories of his older self. He wastes no time testing to see if his knowledge of what is to come is correct, rather than a convincing delusion. The experiment is a monumental success: not only does Allan know 1945’s future, he can—with a little help from his father—change it. Perhaps Buffalo will be spared that atomic bomb. This was Piper’s first published story. There aren’t a lot of science fiction stories that explicitly reference J.W. Dunne’s An Experiment with Time1, but this is definitely one of them. Applied Logic — The Compleat Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt (19752) What is for psychologist Reed Chalmers a promising therapeutic breakthrough is for Chalmers’ colleague Harold Shea something far more valuable: escape from mundane life into worlds of adventure. Simply by arranging one’s thoughts correctly, one can be transported to any world one can imagine. The—well, a—catch with this so-called “syllogismobile” is that the method is imprecise. One may set out for the world of Irish myth, only to find oneself in Norse myth, immediately before Ragnarök. In fact, Shea does set out for the world of Irish myth, only to find himself in Norse myth, immediately before Ragnarök. What hope has a simple academic of surviving the end of the—well, a—world in this, the first of Shea’s many adventures? Shea isn’t just running towards adventure. He’s fleeing from his intimidating (and better paid) soon-to-be-former girlfriend, Gertrude. Don’t worry about Gertrude: she can do better than Shea and almost immediately does3. Summoning Spells — The Doomfarers of Coramonde by Brian Daley (1977) Springbuck is the rightful heir to the throne of Coramonde. However, sorcerer Yardiff Bey has qualifications Springbuck lacks, such as ruthlessness, cunning, magic, and pretty much every non-doomed member of the court as allies. Springbuck does manage to escape, but the village he chooses as his refuge is targeted for destruction. Springbuck is only safe for as long as it will take Bey’s dragon to find and incinerate Springbuck and the village in which he is sheltering. However, that village is home to teacher Van Duyn and his sorcerous pals Andre and Gabrielle deCourtney. They have the means to summon an ally across space and time—one equal to a dragon—before the dragon arrives. Cue the sudden arrival of American soldier Gil MacDonald and the rest of the crew of the armoured personnel carrier Lobo, straight from the battlefields of Vietnam. They don’t make suits of armour like the one pictured on the original mass market paperback anymore. Generally speaking, when one impresses soldiers into a conflict involving arcane forces with which those soldiers are unfamiliar, courtesy dictates one at least feigns enthusiasm about the draftees. Instead, Van Duyn just grumbles that he was hoping for a tank, or maybe mobile artillery. Portal (artificial) — Shadow of Earth by Phyllis Eisenstein (1979) Parsimonious grad student Larry Meyers hired twenty-year-old Celia Ward to tutor him in Spanish. Then Larry seduced Celia, which was a huge money-saver for Larry. The romance proceeded happily until Celia discovered her older boyfriend’s alarmingly large hidden stash of firearms. There is a perfectly innocent explanation. Having discovered the means to travel between parallel worlds, Larry is running guns to that other, far less developed world. To prove he is not lying, Larry transports Celia there… where he promptly abandons her. She is soon captured and sold to the Marquis de los Rubios. Not as a slave or concubine, as a wife. But still… Larry is not going to save Celia, so she will just have to save herself. No matter how low your opinion of Larry is (based on the above), I assure you it is not low enough. Table-top Roleplaying Game Accessories — Quag Keep by Andre Norton (1978) Dungeon Master Eckstern gleefully displays his brand-new, expensive miniatures. Player Martin Jefferson is compelled to grasp one figure in particular. Having done so, he and his companions are instantly transported to TSR’s World of Greyhawktm and brainwashed into thinking they are and always have been natives of that realm. This being Greyhawktm, there is a quest. Norton being determined to expeditiously push the characters in the right direction, there is also a geas compelling Martin and company to slide along the greased rails of the plot. The fate of the world may or may not depend on the outcome. Martin’s fate definitely will. To be frank, this is a terrible, terrible book. However, it does provide an explanation for something I overlooked when I was in the TTRPG industry (because the information was not easily available): sales fell off a cliff in the early 1980s4. If customers were being transported via miniatures to other dimensions and forced to partake in stock plots, that would explain why sales declined. If I’d known, I definitely would have put a small warning label on the back of the packages. These are but a few of the truck-kun alternatives for interdimensional travel. I didn’t even touch on the utility of tornadoes or rabbit holes in this matter. If I have overlooked your favourite travel methods, please extol their virtues in comments below. Be sure to let us know which method actually worked for you.[end-mark] I can only think of one other: James Blish’s Jack of Eagles. ︎1975 is the date of the collection, but the stories themselves are from an earlier era, which I mention to provide context for the next footnote. ︎The gender dynamics in the Shea stories are fascinating. Shea, and to a lesser extent his pals, dream of being he-man manly men, and are rather snarky about Gertrude… provided she is out of earshot. However, none of the men seem to be bold enough to say no to her and she treats Shea’s social circle as her personal serial reverse harem. ︎If I can find my long-forgotten source for this assertion, I will add a link or at least a pointer. ︎ The post Five Ways to Get Transported to Other Worlds That Don’t Involve Getting Hit by a Truck appeared first on Reactor.

Books Mark as Read The Way to Read More Is to Read More This isn’t a “just do it” pep talk, I promise. By Molly Templeton | Published on June 25, 2026 “Woman Reading” by Therese Glaesener-Hartmann (1912) Comment 0 Share New Share “Woman Reading” by Therese Glaesener-Hartmann (1912) If you would like to know how to read more, the internet is happy to tell you. Read 20 pages every day. Set an amount of time for which you read. Learn to quit books that aren’t clicking for you. Learn to pick books that do click with you. There’s a lot of advice out there! Some of it is very good; this beautiful post from John Paul Brammer suggests letting curiosity lead you. “Curiosity is attention’s white-hot spearpoint,” he writes. Lately, I’ve been thinking about one aspect of reading that doesn’t seem to come up as much. It’s not very punchy or clever or life-hacky. It’s actually the opposite: slow and habitual. The key to reading more is to read more. I know. I KNOW. Roll your eyes! I rolled my eyes at myself when I thought this! It sounds like I’m saying some version of “just do it.” But I hate “just do it.” Let me explain. Every so often, I get invested in a project for which I need to read a large pile of books in a moderately small amount of time. Every time this happens, I at first eye the growing stack of books with a certain sense of alarm. Time is finite. The books feel infinite. How am I going to get through? Then I start reading. And within a couple of days, maybe a week or two,  I no longer feel the stress. I get in the reading habit and I stay there for as long as humanly possible. I read, and read, and read some more, and every book I finish makes the next book that much more appealing. Reading is a practice. It’s a hobby, it’s a skill, it’s an obsession for some people, but it is also a practice. It’s a process that requires sustained attention over time, a willingness to pay attention to details, an ability (and the time and privilege) to set the world aside for as long as you’re reading, whether that is 5 minutes or 5 hours. And like any practice or skill, you get better at it the more you do it. There is a huge difference in how I read when I’m finishing a book every so often versus a pile of books one on top of another. I am not saying it’s a race, or that you need to voraciously tear through every book in front of you before the end of the week. (I am also not saying you need to read more, full stop! But people sometimes want to!) What I am saying is that consistency makes a huge difference. Reading every day is walking down the same path in your brain, telling yourself, this is important. This matters. You wear that path into a groove. It becomes a thing you do, like brushing your teeth, or feeding your cats. And consistent reading will reshape your attention, if you let it. When I am reading consistently, regularly, obsessively, I can focus. I can happily sit and read for hours. When I’m not, I can’t. My focus is apparently a use-it-or-lose-it proposition. When I’m not reading much, my brain becomes a slurry of games I want to play and things I want to do and chores un-done and tasks and bills and shoulds. It’s a mess in there. It’s like the worst social media feed. Housework! Errand! Work! Cat, what are you doing?!! Laundry? Nachos! Lather, rinse, repeat. There are a million things you can read if you just want to learn about the power of habit, and I don’t want to belabor the point. Habits are hard to form and easy to break. And if you, like me, are a person who has always read—the classic reader of cereal boxes, of outside-your-genre novels that were the only thing to hand in a friend’s house, of anything and everything you could get your hands on—it can feel strange to consider that even we can fall out of the habit of reading. How is that possible? I read things all day long! Even I have argued that everything counts as reading! But some reading is different from other reading. I want to read books, not Bluesky. (No offense, Bluesky.) I want to read and retain what I’ve read; I want to read and make connections. I want to let lines light up in my head as I remember other books that a new book might be in conversation with. I want one book to lead me to the next like an unbroken row of stones on which I can hop over a river. (The river is my social media feeds, maybe.) I want to nibble away at the TBR pile and find surprises I don’t remember buying. I want the obsessive reader’s impossible feeling: to be caught up.  Just kidding. That never happens. The books are infinite. The more intentional I am about reading, the better I am at it. The less-obsessive reader in my household has also found this to be true; he decided to spend some of his evenings reading, this year, and has made his way through more books so far this year than in all of last year. This isn’t a chore. It’s a choice.  Unlike some habits, this one is fairly easy to pick back up again when I have fallen out of it. If I have not done [insert exhausting but necessary exercise here] in some time, it is hard as hell to get back on that horse. I don’t want to! I’m bad at it! I’m inflexible or wimpy or just don’t want to lie on the floor! Whereas if I haven’t read, I just have to wade through the brain slurry and pick a book. Any book. Let the slurry brain have what it chooses. Sometimes the slurry brain knows best. When I start reading, whatever it is I’ve chosen, things smooth out. My attention span, which may have been in pieces on the floor, reconstructs itself. The spinny hamster wheel in my brain slows. Reading, at its best, brings me back to myself.  At the moment, between reading tasks, I have been skipping among books for over a week, bouncing from first chapter (Emily Bitto’s The Strays) to first chapter (Andrea Hairston’s The Redemption Center is Closed on Sundays) instead of just settling down with one book. It feels terrible. But it’s me. It’s not the books. I took a break from my sustained, focused practice of reading, and now I’m chaotic and unfocused, hitting reload on waste-of-time websites over and over again and getting obsessed with unnecessary internet games (I resisted the siren song of Spelling Bee for so long).  There is one thing to do about this: Pick a book. Sit down with it. And read.[end-mark] The post The Way to Read More Is to Read More appeared first on Reactor.