Little Griffin

I read Saving the Griffin, by Kristin Wolden Nitz, because for several years I've been working and reworking a novel (originally a cycle of stories, hence the reworking) that would share two of its three Library of Congress cataloguing-in-publication subjects:

1. Griffins--Fiction.
2. Brothers and sisters--Fiction.
3. Italy--Fiction.

Nitz's website discusses her inspiration for the book during a stay in Italy (also the setting for her first novel, Defending Irene). Although she doesn't say it, I suspect that observations of her siblings and/or kids were also crucial. The psychological dance among sister and brothers of different ages is nicely observed, and the strongest part of the book.

On the fantasy side, there's almost no magic besides the baby griffin. We see a portal to the griffins' world, but don't enter it or learned why it opened. The plot about what kids do when they find a strange creature is straight from E.T., but those kids are never in real danger and never have to sacrifice much. What Ellen Howard has called "the price of fantasy" is very low in this tale.

At one point protagonist Kate critiques her little brother Michael's choice to name the little griffin "Grifonino"; she says that's like calling a young cat "Kitty," a generic term. That's also an apt metaphor for Saving the Griffin. It's an undemanding tale, pretty much exactly what one would expect.