Deep and Dark and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn

Though Sunny's initiative is thin-she is pushed into most of her choices by her friends and by Leopard adults-the worldbuilding for Leopard society is stellar, packed with details that will enthrall readers bored with the same old magical worlds.

Now she spends the day in mundane Lamb school and sneaks out at night to learn magic with her cadre of Leopard friends: a handsome American bad boy, an arrogant girl who is Orlu’s childhood friend and Orlu himself. Sunny, it seems, is a Leopard person, one of the magical folk who live in a world mostly populated by ignorant Lambs. When a boy in her class, Orlu, rescues her from a beating, Sunny is drawn in to a magical world she's never known existed. She can't play soccer with the boys because, as she says, 'being albino made the sun my enemy,' and she has only enemies at school. This would really just be a “none” for adults.Who can't love a story about a Nigerian-American 12-year-old with albinism who discovers latent magical abilities and saves the world? Sunny lives in Nigeria after spending the first nine years of her life in New York. Rated: Mild, for only two uses of mild language. It is clear that she has never played it before. The characters are believable, the dialogue is clear and concise, and there is a very good moral as well, which I enjoyed immensely.Īstute readers that have played Candyland with their young children or siblings will be amused at the author’s description of the game. It is, in effect, an engrossing little ghost story.

The concepts are easily understood and there is absolutely nothing gory or intense to work through. This is a well-written suspense story for early teen readers. After the family argument goes Ali’s way, and once she arrives, Ali soon learns the details of what happened in 1977 that so completely upset her mom, and determines to do what she can to solve the problem. Ali’s mother, Claire, is vehemently opposed, but refuses to say why. Ali is invited by her Aunt Dulcie to spend the summer at the family cottage, which nobody has visited in nearly 30 years.

Deep and Dark and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn