ENRALAK

A boy travels to a magical realm on his birthday in this middle-grade fantasy.

It’s the winter of 1944, and Elias Olmstead lives with his mother in a basement apartment on New York City’s Upper West Side. His father, a soldier named Daniel, has been reported lost behind enemy lines in Europe. The boy’s mother, Catherine, works at Saks Fifth Avenue, and Elias awaits her eagerly because today is his 10th birthday. When she’s late coming home, he decides to meet her, confident he knows her route. But some street toughs chase him into Central Park. He soon finds a statue of a beautiful woman whose staff glows and points to a tunnel. On the other side, the park is no longer snowy but lush with greenery. The boys chasing Elias have morphed into fierce creatures, but he’s saved by a centaur named Belarius. The centaur explains that this world is called Enralak, then takes Elias to meet an army of talking bears living in caves. The adventure becomes even stranger when Elias partners with Saeil, a feral boy who possesses a locket and a picture of a woman who looks just like Catherine. Later, Elias learns of a prophecy that describes a human among Enralak’s fantastic beings—one capable of changing life for the better. Harlow brings sweetness and light to middle-grade audiences in this well-balanced fantasy. There’s a mystical pulse to every depiction, as in a forest sunrise in which everything “looked as if it had been dusted lightly in a fine layer of sparkling silver sugar.” Elias continues to make remarkable friends throughout the narrative, including Fossa, a kind of giant otter, who says we must not “inflict pain on others because of our own pain.” The villain, the centaur Sibelius, looms in the background until the end. The story crescendos wonderfully as the author posits symmetry between Enralak and Elias’ world, characterized by doppelgängers and art shared through dreams. The prose will give middle-grade readers a vocabulary workout, as a crystal ball is described as having “putrid, nefarious contents.” A clever, self-assured finale should leave fans hungry for Harlow’s next work.

Grandeur and heart fuel this thought-provoking fantasy.