TBR and Beyond Blog Tour: The Magic Paintbrush (Kat Zhang): ARC Review

The Magic Paintbrush, Kat Zhang
Audience: Middle Grade
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Crown Books for Young Readers
Length: 256 pages
Rating: 3.5-4 stars
Summary: Amy has always loved art, but lately her drawings have been less than impressive. There’s no passion, nopersonality, no…magic. Until Amy visits her Lao Lao, her grandmother, and finds an ancient paintbrush that brings anything Amy creates to life!

Now her creation Luna has taken over her bedroom and is running through the streets of Flushing, Queens. What an international adventure filled with an ancient Chinese legend, a greedy adversary and ghastly beasts!

Award-winning author Kat Zhang teams up with Eric Darnell, the writer and director of the Madagascar series and the Chief Creative Officer of Baobab Studios, to create a captivating highly-illustrated middle grade series debut about finding your own path, the power of imagination, and the strength of family.

Purchase Links:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound*

^{*I’ll earn a small commission for any purchases made through my affiliate link (at no extra cost to you)}

Welcome to my stop for the TBR and Beyond Tours’ book tour for The Magic Paintbrush. “In this highly illustrated series launch, Amy, a Chinese American girl picks up an ancient paintbrush and unwittingly unleashes the power to make her art real—and sometimes dangerous. Perfect for fantasy readers who love Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor and Dragon Pearl series.” You can find a list of the other stops on the TBR and Beyond Tours’ website.

I received an eARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Since I’m well past middle grade age, I don’t read a lot of Middle Grade fiction anymore, but on the rare occasions I do, I have two different tiers that I use for reviewing–do I like this now as an adult and would middle grade Veronica like this? It’s not really fair to use the first question as a way to evaluate a book meant to be read by, you know, actual children, so I generally use the latter when critiquing middle grade books.

The Magic Paintbrush is one of the few MG books that I enjoyed even as an adult and that young Veronica would have devoured.

Kat Zhang’s latest book is a magical adventure that takes readers from the bustling streets of Flushing, Queens to the picturesque Chinese countryside in Guiling. Amy, a budding young artist,

The book is well-written and full of a kind of understated humor that both kids and adults can enjoy. I think there’s sometimes a misconception that stories for younger audiences have to be watered down or overly simplified. While there’s certainly a need to for developmentally appropriate stories (you can’t expect a ten-year-old to read at a university level,) I think we sometimes swing too far into the other extreme and underestimate just how much young readers can understand and appreciate, and writers can fall into the habit of giving their MG books dull and dry language, thinking middle grade readers won’t appreciate anything else.

Kat Zhang clearly doesn’t subscribe to the school of thought that clever writing is “wasted” on children. Whether it’s varying her sentence structure or being particular with word choice, it’s obvious she put thought and care into, not just the mechanics of the story’s plot, but the actual storytelling aspect as well, which makes The Magic Paintbrush an enjoyable read even if you aren’t the target audience.

The Magic Paintbrush is so much more than your typical magical adventure story. It touches on the idea of legacy and intergenerational familial relationships. From the very moment her illustration appeared on the page, Lao Lao captured my heart and immediately became my favorite character. Amy’s maternal grandma is, in many ways, your stereotypical Chinese grandma with a house crammed full stuff, a feathery perm, and a penchant for expressing love and hospitality through food, but she’s also an energetic artist with a sense of adventure. I loved seeing her personality shine through the page and wish we’d gotten more time to see her relationship with Amy develop more.

The story is fast-paced and enjoyable. It’s probably perfect for middle grade readers, but the adult in me can’t help but wish we’d gotten to see things teased out just a little bit more. Zhang touches on Chinese myths and gives us glimpses of the setting (Flushing and Guiling,) but I would’ve loved for those to be expanded just a little more. Similarly, I loved the coming-of-age element and seeing Amy’s struggles to grow as an artist and her beliefs that she must abandon her childish imagination to become a “Serious Artist” and wish we’d gotten to see that idea developed a little more. I’m still not sure how I feel about the Villian POV chapters interspersed throughout the book, but I didn’t hate it as much as I initially thought I would.

About the Author

Kat Zhang loves traveling to places both real and fictional–the former have better souvenirs, but the latter allow for dragons, so it’s a tough pick. She is the author of the novels the Hybrid Chronicles, The Emperor’s Riddle, and The Memory of Forgotten Things, and the picture books Amy Wu and the Perfect Bao and Amy Wu and the Patchwork Dragon. When not writing, spends her free time scribbling poetry, taking photographs, and climbing atop things she shouldn’t.