Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly (review)

Eleven-year-old Virgil is the shy one in his family, and in his class—okay, he’s the shy one everywhere. Twelve-year-old Kaori is the junior psychic to whom Virgil tells his problems; Valencia is the classmate whom Virgil likes from afar; Chet is the bully who haunts his life. Fate seems to be trying to bring Valencia and Virgil together, according to Kaori, but it’s sure not taking any sort of direct route, especially when it seems to use Chet to set things in motion. Chet drops Virgil’s backpack down an old well in the woods, Virgil goes after it because it contains his beloved guinea pig and then finds himself stranded, and the girls go in search of him. There’s a touch of Snyder’s classic The Egypt Game here, as a group of disparate youngsters make their own maybe-magic through ritual and find surprising bonds; however, the book adds another layer with the folkloric storytelling of Virgil’s grandmother, Lola, that suggests some genuine magic realism. While Chet the bully is reductively drawn, the other characters are streamlined but original; the book does a particularly fine job of giving quiet Virgil enough internal interest to make him a legitimate star and to keep him from being overshadowed by the relentlessly charismatic Kaori. Kelly (The Land of Forgotten Girls, BCCB 5/16; Blackbird Fly, BCCB 4/15) is proving herself a solid and original contributor to the middle-grade fiction shelves, and readers will root for Virgil to find his destiny.