The Decoding of Lana Morris (review)

Lana Morris "lives in a foster home for retards"; the sixteen-year-old was moved to this small-town Nebraska house only to find that her foster siblings were four special needs kids (colloquially termed "Snicks"), which has completely tanked Lana's social rating with her peers. She's therefore reduced to driving around with a group of troublemakers who treat her contemptuously, which is how she ends up in a distant village with a vintage shop where she buys a lovely old drawing pad. Events begin to suggest that the drawing paper, of which there are only thirteen sheets, has magical powers: when Lana erases the hand from a drawing of her venomous foster mother, the woman loses a hand in an accident, and when she draws a maternal visit to one of the Snicks, his long-lost mother indeed turns up. The result is a sequence of whirlwind changes, but they don't always turn out as Lana would hope, and she's determined to use her remaining paper to bring good fortune to her and those she cares about. As usual, the McNeals (authors of Crushed, BCCB 2/06) carefully craft a three-dimensional and original reality, their smooth writing making the intricate human world of their protagonists seem artless and natural. The fantastical touch of the supernaturally charged drawing paper adds sparkle to the story without unbalancing it, helping to foreshadow the fairy-tale-esque ending that solves all the problems. There's still plenty of reality, though, in Lana's gradual realization that her inappropriately adored foster father is using her and in her growing attachment to and responsibility for her foster siblings; there's also realism in her slowness to grasp that the boy next door, who moves from being the least dangerous of the troublemakers to Lana's ally, really likes her. A colorful character drama with genuine spice and impact, this will appeal to fans of the rich fictions of Ruth White or Jacqueline Woodson.