Tag Archives: Magical Realism

Follow the Clues: A Review of A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

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A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall
Jasmine Warga
HarperCollins Childrens
Age 8-12
September 10, 2024

Stolen art, a floating girl, and a mystery-solving turtle make for a quirky and suspenseful whodunit. Introverted and outcast, Rami spends more time than he’d like at the Penelope L. Brooks Museum where his mom oversees the cleaning crew. When a painting is stolen from the Cherry Hall gallery, and he and his mom become suspects, Rami begins seeing a ghost girl hovering in that same gallery. And she looks an awful lot like the girl in the missing painting. With the help of a Veda, a clever classmate and aspiring detective, and an observant turtle named Agatha, he will unravel the story of the girl, the painting, and the theft at the Penelope.

In a story about the importance of being seen, Jasmine Warga explores the connection between art, understanding, and truth. As a child of Lebanese immigrants, Rami is an outcast at school, and too timid to make trouble. Veda, however, is a bold and quirky personality, willing to challenge him to be daring in an attempt to solve the mystery. Their tentative new friendship is drawn with thoughtful attentions to the changeable emotions and growing pains of middle school. Themes of friendship and the desire to be seen (by Rami and Veda, by the girl, and by Agatha) provide subtlety to balance the heavier aspects of loneliness and the immigrant experience. This gentle, yet thrilling early elementary school mystery combines brief chapters, a fast pace, and multiple narrators to appeal to a young audience without being entirely childish. Warga breaks the fourth wall in chapters narrated by Agatha to add context, and a touch of magical realism, for young readers. The best combination of a warm-hearted friendship and clue-laced mystery.

Breaking the Cycle: A Review of Black Girl Unlimited

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Black girl unlimitedBlack Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard
By Echo Brown
January 14, 2020
Published by Henry Holt and Co.
Grades 10+

Echo is a quantum wizard, just like her mom. Her mom, April, has suffered through so much trauma that the only way to relieve the pain is through the white rocks that all the adults in Cleveland’s East Side seem to worship. Despite April’s attempts to fight her addiction and end the generational cycle of trauma, Echo and her brothers still get caught up in the cycle. Echo tries to make miracles for the people around her, to plant seeds in their hearts that will get them off their destructive paths. But to become a successful wizard, Echo must first overcome the turmoil and suffering in her own life.

Heavily autobiographical, Brown’s debut novel does not shy away from tough subject matter. Ranging from molestation to sexual assault, drug addiction to death, and other complex topics, the characters in this book have endured a lifetime of pain. The magical realism throughout the book highlights the lengths that women will go to try and protect other women from abuse. Brown focuses on the experiences of young black women and all the different ways that the world has seemingly failed to protect them. In her novel, only women can be quantum wizards. It is the network of women in Echo’s life that ultimately support her and rescue her. Men, like her brothers and father, either need rescuing, or they are the perpetrators of pain.  A profound and heartbreaking story about how our communities shape us and support us, for better or worse.