Kingston and the Magician’s Lost and Found by Rucker Moses

Abstract

Reviewed by: Kingston and the Magician’s Lost and Found by Rucker Moses April Spisak Moses, Rucker Kingston and the Magician’s Lost and Found; by Rucker Moses and Theo Gangi. Putnam, 2020 [288p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780525516866 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780525516873 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 6-9 Kingston’s mom wants to keep him away from magic, an entirely understandable inclination given that her husband walked into a magical mirror and never came back. Now Kingston’s twelve and they’re heading back to Brooklyn, hoping to start a coffee shop and reclaim their lives. Soon, however, Kingston is drawn into a mystery involving his father, and it turns out he’s still alive but is stuck in a haunting echo realm that could consume reality. With the help of his uncles, his intrepid cousin, and a rediscovered old friend, Kingston hopes to be able to bring his dad back while keeping reality intact. The text is zippy and animated, reading more like a screenplay than a novel, and the secondary characters are splashy, quickly drawn representations of Brooklynites in a world that has always been full of true magic (magicians and realm-shifting, fantasy-style magic are tied together here, existing in harmony most of the time). Kingston is a carefully balanced mix of optimistic, jaded, and grief-stricken, moving through the world with more hope than the grownups who surround him. The growth here is that Kingston and his mom are much more at peace with the world as it exists, not focused exclusively on what might have been, even as hope may offer them more. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois