The Time of Green Magic

McKay adds the fetching family at the center of this resonant novel to her rich cache of irresistible protagonists. When Abi is 11, her placid life in London with sage Granny Grace and Abi's widower father is derailed after he marries kind Polly (mother to disgruntled 13-year-old Max and affable if perpetually sticky six-year-old Louis) and Granny returns to her native Jamaica. The newly blended family moves into an ivy-shrouded old house, where "the stairs were the sort you fly down in dreams" and Abi felt that "nothing could be impossible"--a premonition that proves prescient. An avid reader, Abi is transported into the pages of books, returning to find evidence of her journeys: sand on her pillow, snow in her hair. By night, Louis, who sorely misses Polly when she's away on a work trip, is visited and comforted by a mysterious "cat-thing," which, Abi and Max surmise, may have sprung from a sketchbook of cave art drawings. McKay leaves enticing ambiguity between the real and fantastical, creating an unassailable magic of her own in an incandescent portrait of family, friendship, and imagination. Ages 8-12. Agent: Molly Ker Hawn, the Bent Agency. (July)

Gr 5-7— Eleven-year-old Abi, motherless since infancy, and her recently blended family have moved into an old ivy-covered house in north London, where she must learn to navigate life between older and younger stepbrothers Max and Louis. Now that her father Theo is remarried, her beloved Granny Grace who helped raise her has moved back to Jamaica, sending her wise and encouraging letters which are the envy of six-year-old Louis. In the new house, Abi's escape into reading in her attic bedroom takes on a strange new dimension; not only does she feel herself becoming part of the stories but she finds tangible evidence of the books' settings. When stepmother Polly goes on an extended business trip, French art student Esme is hired to watch Louis after school, providing Max, 13, with his first infatuation and Louis with a mysterious night visitor, Iffen, a catlike creature derived from Esme's drawings. As Abi and Max devise a plan to rescue Louis from Iffen's growing menace, they form a bond which points the way to true familial love and loyalty. As in her "Saffy's Angel" series, McKay employs deft characterization, vivid setting, delicious humor and some beautifully lyrical language to portray the struggles and successes of what it means to be a family. VERDICT A perfect mix of magic and realism. Recommended for juvenile fantasy collections.—Marie Orlando, formerly at Suffolk Coop. Lib. Syst., Bellport, NY