"Once upon a time there were two sister princesses who lived in a tower. They ate leftover gas station food, stale cereal, and peanut butter sandwiches--only they had to settle for creamy because the evil stepmother didn't like crunchy." If their life really were a fairy tale, 12-year-old Sol Madrid and her six-year-old sister Ming would live happily ever after... once their magical, mythical Auntie Jove showed up in Louisiana to rescue them from their evil stepmother. But Tita Vea, the cruel woman their father married after their mother died, is, tragically, all they've got. After Papa abandons them all for another woman in the Philippines, their home country, Sol bounces between fantasy and reality as she navigates her existence with Tita Vea ("a fire-breathing dragon in dirty pink slippers"), her little sister whom she can't protect forever, and her best friend, Manny, who is becoming annoyingly interested in kissing her.
Filipina-American Erin Entrada Kelly's (Blackbird Fly) themes of sisterhood, friendship, truth and hope are what lift The Land of Forgotten Girls into the realm of the truly special. Sol is authentic--a Filipina girl with a thousand counts against her, who is as likely to be throwing pine cones at a private-school albino girl as she is to be befriending the one she has bloodied. Perhaps Sol's greatest saving grace is her ability to find the real-life heroes, and to accept their care and support in spite of her fiercely independent spirit. Readers who feel marginalized or alone in their troubles will adore Sol and her ragtag family, both chosen and "real." --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor