King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callendar tells the story of King, a teen ager grieving his older brother’s unexpected death while questioning his own sexuality and facing a crisis with his best friend. Will he have the courage to stand up for who he is and who he loves?
King and the Dragonflies grabs your attention with beautiful descriptions of the Louisiana bayou. King, reeling from his brother’s death, imagines his brother reincarnated as a dragonfly. Descriptions of them help the reader understand King’s fascination with them. “There are hundreds [of dragonflies], maybe even thousands, just sitting on tree branches and rocks, baking in the sun, flitting over the brown water that seeps up from the dirt, zipping across the sky, showing off their ghostlike wings” (1). These descriptive passages make the book a pleasure to read.
Readers who enjoy beautifully written books will enjoy King and the Dragonflies. So, too, will people who have read Wolf Hollow. Both have threads of social justice and what it means to be a good friend in a difficult situation. Both, too, have characters who must decide what they stand for.