A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic

by Lisa Papademetriou

320 pages – ages 8+
Published by HarperCollins on October 6, 2015

Synopsis- Kai doesn’t know what to expect when she is staying with her great-aunt in Texas for a while. Her great-aunt is a poet, listens to rap, and wears red tennis shoes. When Kai is looking around the house, she discovers a book that is blank except for one page, called The Exquisite Corpse. On an impulse, she writes a sentence into the book. Strangely, the next time she opens it, the book has more paragraphs written!

On the other side of the world, in Pakistan, Leila is visiting her father’s family. She is walking through the family library and finds a strange book with only one full page, and a handwritten sentence. It is called The Exquisite Corpse. She ends up writing another sentence after the paragraphs ended.

And so the adventure begins connecting two different worlds.

What I Thought- This was a fun book. I really enjoyed reading about how the two girls and how they interacted without realizing it. It was neat seeing how the stories connected to each other as the book unfolded. The characters are realistic, and Ms. Papademetriou does a great job at making it so that it is a believable story. Kai and Leila are both out of their comfort zones – Leila is in a mostly Muslim country with more strict expectations but she was raised in a more liberal environment. Kai’s single mother is slightly protective of her, and Kai’s great-aunt lets her run around the small town after dark. It is a culture shock to both of them and you can see as they both get accustomed to their surroundings a little, and they find out more about themselves in the process. I found it funny that by the end of the book, it turns out that Leila and Kai live in the same city (but the book doesn’t say if they meet) – Awesome ending!!!

I give this book five out of five bookworms!

Categories: Age 9+

Tags: bibliophile, book review, bookworm, childrens books, lisa papademetriou, tale of highly unusual magic