Summer is upon us, and the annual question of what to do with bored kids during the long, hot days is rearing its sunburned head. Two crowd-pleasing options when I was a tween that still prove popular are amusement parks (Cedar Point in Ohio was my mecca) and summer camp (or in my case its cheaper cousin, coed vacation Bible school). Who doesn’t love screaming down the precipice of a roller coaster or sharing s’mores around a campfire crackling with Capture the Flag tension?
But what happens when the expected good times turn sinister? Two new middle grade novels, about an abandoned amusement park and a malevolent sleepaway camp, bewitchingly explore the shadowy corners of the sunny season.
In RIALTO (Clarion, 480 pp., $19.99, ages 10 and up), by the Edgar Award winner Kate Milford, Dahlia and Ivy Vicar are on a car trip with their parents from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Rialto, Mo. (population 600), where Mom’s best friend, Sally, is spending the summer with her family. The town is also home to a theme park of the same name that Mom, a chronicler of roadside attractions, hopes to tour. Before it abruptly closed in 1988, it was known for its Skyway gondola, fantastical carousel and charming shops. Now it stands abandoned in a deeply wooded forest.
The three-day drive has been trying for the siblings, mostly because 14-year-old Ivy has been up in the business of 12-year-old Dahlia, recently diagnosed with anxiety and depression. The two have always been close, but lately Ivy’s protective concern makes Dahlia desperate to escape her sister’s claustrophobic orbit.
Once they arrive in Rialto, the Vicars are greeted by Sally, her husband and her stepson, Remy. Sally’s Aunt Jess, a longtime local who “crossed over,” has left Remy a list of bequests she would like him to share with her Rialto friends and neighbors. He invites Ivy and Dahlia to come along. The three are puzzled and intrigued by the quirky keepsakes on the list and the enigmatic handwritten messages to their recipients that seem to be an apology on the part of Aunt Jess for a transgression she committed years ago that coincided with the closing of the park.
What really happened to her? What did she do that was so wrong? And could the clue-gathering process help mend Dahlia and Ivy’s splintered sisterhood? As the mystery grows, so does the sense that the scrim between the real world and one in which carousel animals come to life and wishing tokens exist is thin indeed, and that what Remy, Ivy and Dahlia are investigating is magical in nature.
This is a stuffed suitcase of a book, overflowing with lush descriptions of everything from elaborately engineered music boxes to twee terrariums, and featuring a complicated magic system involving secret portals, folkloric generational feuds and a pair of blue, kid-sized lace wings. But it’s also emblematic of Milford’s signature cozy style and settings, which recall classics such as “The Last Unicorn,” “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “Winnie-the-Pooh,” all of which she nods to here. Lovers of immersive mythopoesis will be sucked right in.
For readers looking for a leaner, meaner experience, FATAL GLITCH: Camp Zero (Stonefruit Studio, 144 pp., $14.99, ages 8 to 12), the first book in a satirical series by the two-time Newbery medalist Erin Entrada Kelly and the two-time National Book Award finalist Eliot Schrefer, with illustrations by Jeannette Arroyo, should fit the bill nicely. Or should I say nastily? Because the main character, 11-year-old Sofia Mendoza, is a hostile, manipulative online gamer who only cares about collecting more credits in her favorite game, Sandbox. Which is how she found herself dumped at the remote, bare-bones Camp Forestjaw, which her father hopes will “give you some perspective to reflect on what you did to your sister.” (Gulp!)
Sofia is greeted by the camp director, Monarch, who looks as though “she’s been crafted out of triangles and edges” and disconcertedly carries a robotic vulture with knives for talons on her shoulder. Monarch informs Sofia and the six other campers, also 11-year-old addicted Sandboxers, that they will vie in a series of physical, device-free games and then rank one another on who deserves to move on and win the grand prize of one million Sandbox credits. Sofia is determined to systematically destroy the competition until she’s the last one gaming.
But is the prize what she thinks it is? And where have all the losers been spirited off to? Did I mention the weird alien presence at the beginning and end of the novel that’s sharing Sofia’s story while also siphoning off the life force of … whom? Sofia? One of the other kids? YOU? Savvy readers will recognize aspects of online games like Minecraft and Roblox (and perhaps some unsavory facets of their own gaming greed) while enjoying action that’s fast, furious and gleefully Machiavellian.
Whether your child’s warm-weather destination is Six Flags, soccer camp or their own backyard, their delight is sure to be doubled by tucking one of these captivating summer reads into their knapsack.
The post Two Bewitching Kids’ Novels Explore the Shadowy Corners of Summer Fun appeared first on New York Times.
