Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 09/09/2022 Gr 4–8—A New York City seventh grader at Bright Futures Academy, Nell Batista faces detention with eighth graders Annika, "Crud," and Tom. Annika has brown hair and green eyes; Crud has dark hair; Tom has yellow hair and blue eyes. They are startled when their detention monitor, Mr. Boot, announces he is there to teach them magic using chopsticks. That day, each of them is permitted to wish for something lost, and Nell chooses her missing brother, River, who disappeared three years ago from Washington Square Park. Nell's life becomes a dizzying mix of magic classes, everyday problems with friends and family, and eventually, a journey to the Nigh—a parallel realm where magical beings dwell. Nell returns to Hither (her world) but suspects her brother River was brought to Nigh and makes another expedition there with her friends. This is a whimsical, ambitious story, built by children's imagination and numerous significant subplots. It is grounded by Nell's first-person storytelling and her love for River. The abundance of plotting is further anchored by the moral decisions each character must make: should Nell cage a magical creature to find her brother? Did Annika use social media to bully a classmate? Universal realistic themes are used as jumping-off points for magical elevators, talking park statues, and other fantastical details that readers will find appealing, and the action ends on a cliffhanger that will leave tweens wanting more. No skin tones are described. VERDICT A domestic fantasy that covers a lot of ground with solid character development, this novel will be enjoyed by many readers.—Caitlin Augusta - Copyright 2022 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 09/15/2022 *Starred Review* Fresh clues about what happened to her vanished little brother send seventh-grader Nell Batista shuttling between two alternate versions of New York City, neither one quite ours—as readers will discover when, first, an after-school club the chronic truant is forced to join turns out to be a class in elementary magic, and then, after an attempted kidnapping, she finds herself immersed in Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain, talking with the bronze angel. In fact, Potter so stocks her tale with exotic creatures, from tiny sprites to scary sewer monsters, that it’s sometimes hard to tell Nell’s familiar Hither from the (somewhat) more magical Nigh. But both prove excitingly dangerous places as Nell and allies who, like many of the people and locales in this delicious fantasy, aren’t what they seem at first, or second, glance pass back and forth on the way to a climactic narrow escape from a ring of cruel magicians trafficking in children with fertile imaginations. The scary bits are leavened by sly humor and terrific flights of fancy. Some questions are answered by the end, but a general lack of resolution combined with an uncommonly appealing cast leave plenty of reasons to conjure up sequels. - Copyright 2022 Booklist.