From Robin Gow, the award–winning author of Dear Mothman, comes a gripping middle–grade novel in verse about a boy who digs up and loses control of a saber-toothed tiger Jasper's favorite person is his older brother, Callan. They go on fossil–finding missions and stay up late while their parents work nights. Callan even helped Jasper pick out his new name when he came out as trans. But Callan starts to grow distant and leaves for college without taking Jasper on a promised fossil dig. Jasper feels abandoned-and angry. Who needs Callan? He will dig by himself, in his backyard. As he digs, he hears a voice: the bones of a saber–toothed tiger. He's buried deep, and he wants Jasper to DIG. Jasper is sure a discovery like this could change the world, or at least get Callan to text him back. But as the saber-toothed tiger finds freedom, Jasper realizes he may have unleashed a monster that no one was ready for, and that anger can empower you-or destroy you.
"Narrator JJ Hawkins gives voice to the hurt and anger eighth grader Jasper, an autistic trans boy, feels when his older brother goes off to college while Jasper channels his emotions into digging for fossils in the backyard. It can't be possible…but then a saber-toothed tiger speaks telepathically to Jasper from beneath the earth. What could be cooler? Unfortunately, Gow's free verse poems emphasize Jasper's roiling emotions over plotting and pacing, with the result that listeners spend more time hearing how Jasper feels than they do experiencing the suspense of discovery and the excitement that ensues. Hawkins does his best to lend Jasper some nuance, but his efforts can go only so far with a character who is written as an exposed raw nerve.
A disappointment. (Verse fiction. 11-14)"
