MORIARTY, Jaclyn. A Corner of White. Bk. 1. 372p. (The Colors of Madeleine Series). Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine. 2013. Tr $17.99. ISBN 978-0-545-39736-0; ebook $17.99. ISBN 978-0-545-51021-9. LC 2012016582.
Gr 6-9–In this lovely fantasy, two stories run parallel. Fourteen-year-old Madeleine lives in Cambridge, England, where she is adjusting to life without her dad. Elliot lives in the Kingdom of Cello, where his search for his dad is postponed by the deplorable state of crops at home. If it were not for the tiny portal in a parking meter, Madeleine and Elliot would not have started writing letters back and forth. The story is told through the teens’ communications and an omniscient narrator. This mix allows readers to know Madeleine and Elliot and their problems intimately, but it also gives them an aerial view of events, helps them meet the richly drawn secondary characters, and allows them to see the ingenious way in which the protagonists’ lives ultimately combine. Attacks by “Colors,” “living organisms: a kind of rogue subclass of the colors that we see when we look at a red apple or blue sky” keep the townspeople on edge, and Elliot wonders if his dad were killed during one of them. Mysteries abound. Is Madeleine’s mom’s strange behavior due to her inability to cope with poverty, or is something else going on? Why doesn’t Madeleine’s dad answer her letter, and is she somehow to blame for his absence? Ultimately, this is a story of two teenagers helping each other figure out their places in their respective worlds.–Jennifer Prince, Buncombe County Public Libraries, NC
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