Shadowshaper

In his first novel for young adults, Daniel José Older (Half-Resurrection Blues) infuses modern Brooklyn with magic and mythology in a fresh urban fantasy.

Sierra lives with her mother, Maria, and her abuelo, Grandpa Lázaro, in a Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone. She's looking forward to spending her summer partying with her best friend, Bennie, and painting a mural off the Junklot where her abuelo's friends spend their days playing dominos. Her plans go south when she sees the subject of an adjoining mural (literally) cry tears, and her grandpa, who hasn't spoken in months, suddenly tells her about the shadowshapers, warning that "they are coming for us" and urging her to paint faster and ask Robbie for help. Robbie seems willing, but they are attacked by a corpuscule ("a dead body with someone else's spirit... shoved into it," Robbie tells Sierra). From there, Sierra finds herself a key player in the struggle between shadowshapers and those who would enslave ancestral spirits for their own purposes. Summer in Brooklyn suffuses the story, with fantastic scenes set in Coney Island and Prospect Park, as well as a gentrifying Prospect Heights (which Bennie perfectly dubs "the Takeover").

The people (largely of Caribbean or Afro-Caribbean descent) who populate Older's novel come to sparkling life thanks to pitch-perfect dialogue, pacing and a generous sense of humor. There are rich friendships, family and neighborhood relationships, plus a delicious romance. He addresses the growing pains of adolescence, including exceptional passages about body image and the struggle for self-acceptance, with refreshing candor. --Angela Carstensen, school librarian and blogger

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