The Oracle Code

February 10, 2020
Shot while intervening in a robbery, Barbara Gordon loses both the use of her legs and her best friend, who stops talking to her after the incident. Enrolled in an in-patient rehabilitation program at the Arkham Center for Independence, Babs finds her anger and withdrawal lessening after she makes a group of new friends, who share stories of change and play card games and wheelchair basketball. When one, a girl named Jena,
suddenly goes missing, Babs suspects foul play and immerses herself in investigating the unsettling mysteries of Arkham, utilizing her skills as a hacker and the help of allies inside and outside the center. This sharp-edged mystery nods to the Batman universe while
centering Barbara, grounding her story, and granting her agency. Preitano excels at depicting emotion, particularly anger, through faces and body language to
portray an intent young woman learning to move forward from trauma. Nijkamp repeatedly explores the idea that people with disabilities needn’t be “fixed,” along the way considering how stories can be used to reveal hard-to-communicate truths. Ages 13–up. (Mar.)■

January 31, 2020

Gr 6 Up-An accident devastates a superhero but can't crush her spirit. Before, Barbara Gordon was an elite hacker. But when an attempt to help her father, police commissioner Gordon, with an armed robbery goes wrong, Babs is shot, leaving her paralyzed below the waist and unsure how to reawaken her curiosity and sense of daring. She enrolls at the Arkham Center for Independence (ACI), where patients with disabilities are rehabilitated. Though Babs finds the ACI ominous and director Dr. Maxwell unsettling, she stays at the behest of her father and finally rekindles her determination as she realizes that students are going missing and her mistrust of the institute may be more than paranoia. In this fast-paced and thoughtfully crafted mystery, Nijkamp gives comic book lovers a refreshing take on Barbara Gordon's journey to becoming Oracle (the persona that in the late 1980s replaced Batgirl as Barbara Gordon's alter ego). While Babs copes with post-traumatic stress disorder, and some doubt her abilities now that she's in a wheelchair, she realizes that though her life looks different, that doesn't mean that the future she envisioned for herself has to change. She's a winning and deeply relatable protagonist, though her friends are more thinly developed and function more as plot devices. Shadowy illustrations evoke film noir and set the perfect tone for Babs's escapades; imagery of puzzle pieces represent her growing understanding of what's really going on at the institute, as well as in her own heart. VERDICT This strong and empowering addition to DC's growing line of origin stories will resonate with superhero fans while also enticing newcomers.-Darla Salva Cruz, Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY

Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2020
Grades 7-11 Barbara Gordon is a teen hacker, puzzle-solver, and mystery-lover who spends evenings on Gotham City rooftops, coding away with her best friend. But after a gunshot paralyzes Barbara from the waist down, she?now using a wheelchair?is consigned to rehab at the Arkham Center for Independence. As she is divorced from friends and family, her fear and anguish compound themselves, and she angrily pushes back on everything she always believed herself to be. The huge, dark mansion of the institute has some huge, dark secrets, though, and cracking that code will require her to find strength in new friends and her old self. Nijkamp is freed from continuity here to create a complete and emotionally compelling journey for a character who needs to reclaim her life and identity, and overall, readers will find in Barbara a deeply human understanding. Preitano drenches the dark mansion in creepiness, particularly via several stylized story-within-a-story interludes, but keeps the personalities of the characters, their vulnerabilities and strength, front and center.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2020
Nijkamp (contributor: His Hideous Heart, 2019, etc.) reimagines the backstory of Oracle, computer genius and ally to Batman. When skilled hacker Barbara "Babs" Gordon and her best friend, Benjamin, attempt to intervene in a robbery, Babs is shot. Six weeks later, the newly paralyzed Babs reluctantly rolls into the Arkham Center for Independence, where teens with disabilities undergo physical and emotional rehabilitation. Despite her father's well-meaning advice, Babs resents being there. Even the mysterious cries within the mansion's walls can't lift the teen's despondence--until Jena, a burn survivor full of haunting tales, disappears. Aided by supportive patients Yeong and Issy, whom she gradually befriends, Babs must accept her new reality in order to find Jena and escape a sinister plot. The author sensitively portrays Babs' frustration and trauma and realistically addresses her challenges, such as mastering wheelchair ramps and negotiating stairs. Babs' increasing self-confidence is heartening, and the message that people with disabilities don't need to be "fixed" in order to thrive is empowering (albeit slightly heavy-handed). Balancing bright and dark colors, Preitano's (contributor: Puerto Rico Strong, 2018, etc.) illustrations vividly convey Babs' anger and determination, and a jigsaw-puzzle motif reflects Babs' quest to piece together her new identity as well as the institution's secret. Most characters present white. Yeong, who walks with forearm crutches, is cued through her name as Korean; Issy, who uses a wheelchair, presents black. A refreshingly disability-positive superhero origin story. (Graphic fantasy. 12-16)

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