12-year-old Kyana is pretty happy with her life in her neighborhood of Park Row. Sure, her mom has to work way to hard because money is tight, and she's under pressure to well at school, even at math...but she has her very dear best friend, Nae, to make school better, and her very dear grandma to love and cook with at home. Then she discovers she has magic, and she has to spend every Saturday at Park Row Magic Academy, even though the first day of class there is Nae's birthday party....and she can't tell anyone about the magic.
Kyana is determined to excel at magic, especially the Charms part of it, which seems most likely to help her mom out financially. But even as she gets better at magic, she gets deeper into a web of lies with Nae about where she is on Saturdays, pushing their friendship to the breaking point. To add to her worries, her grandma's mind is slowly being swallowed by Alzheimer's. And then the bomb drops--the Park Row magic school is going to be closed due to lack of funding. The other city magic schools, in whiter and richer neighborhoods, will stay open, and if Kyana can come up with several thousand dollars, she can finish her initial training at one of them. If she can't (and her mother can't work any harder than she does, so it seems impossible) she'll loose her magic, just as she's finding out what her own special gift is and overcoming her self-doubt.
So wining a city wide baking contest with a sweet cash prize seems to be the obvious answer, and her grandma's recipes, which have a magic of their own, are perfect for it. But when Kyana inadvertently contaminates her first round entry of cupcakes with inadvertent magic, she creates a problem she can't fix alone. She'll need every friend she has--old, new, and unexpected--and a bit of help from magical (and adorable) cat-like beings to fix things. And she has to keep on baking, because she's not about to loose hope.
The various very relatable tensions in Kyana's life, with their real world echoes made me anxious at times. But they are lightened beautifully by the wonder of her entry into a world of magic, by friendship and love, by delightful cooking, and of course magical "kittens." And I was left feeling warm and cozy, so excited by the #1 in the title -- I can't wait for more!
A sweet treat of a book!
disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher
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Glad you enjoyed this book. I have it on hold at the library. You've gotten me excited to read it.
ReplyDeleteI hope you enjoy it :)
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