THE BOOKMAKER

A young girl must help magical creatures in Lynn’s debut middle-grade fantasy series starter.

Ethiopian-born Lyric Murphy has always had a good imagination, and Gran, the kind older woman that adopted her when she was a baby, loves to tell Lyric to follow her fantasies. However, other people aren’t as accepting of Lyric’s eccentricities. The girl has always felt somewhat alone, but the odd, black-and-gold–skinned little creatures she thought she imagined in the woods always kept her entertained. Now that Lyric is almost 13, she’s decided to put away childish things, but it doesn’t seem to be working—if the creatures in the shape of words that pop out of her book are anything to go by. Lyric is starting to suspect that she’s hallucinating until she’s enlisted to help the Bookmaker, a man whom she’d only heard about in her Gran’s stories. It turns out that two small but important words—Forsooth and Wherefore—have been kidnapped by an evil creature, and the Bookmaker needs Lyric’s help to get them back. Along the way, Lyric finds out just how magical the world truly is—and how important she herself is. Lynn offers a magical story that feels light and airy despite its deep worldbuilding. In its broadest strokes, this plot doesn’t feel very original, featuring a girl finding out she’s special and going on a magical quest. However, the world she inhabits includes characters that are essentially words with personalities, which adds a whimsical quality as well as complexity. The author particularly shines in her poetic descriptions of supernatural beings, which allow readers to easily envision even the oddest-looking ones: “The little creature was made almost entirely of small shells imbued with all the colors of the sea, from pale pink to sand to shades of gray and deep purples and browns. Each shell curved in a knobbly spiral, weathered and notched.” Readers will look forward to future installments, which will likely develop this complex world further.

A lyrical and creative tale that brings ideas to vivid life.