Illustrator’s agent: Susan Cohen, Writers House. But the story has some gaps, and a message about the failings of magic may disappoint younger fantasy fans.

Adult readers will savor Ursu’s allusions to well-known fairy tales-most significantly, Pinocchio-and appreciate the many well-turned phrases. It’s left to Oscar and Callie to save Asteri. It gets worse: his garden is ravaged, the city’s children fall ill, and a monster stalks the countryside. In Breadcrumbs, Anne Ursu tells, in her one-of-a-kind voice, a story that brings together fifty years of childrens literature in a tale as modern as it is timeless. Unprepared to deal with customers, he receives help from the Healer’s apprentice, Callie, but Oscar realizes his inability to make small talk is more than shyness: there is something off about him. (Ursu subtly delineates tics that suggest 11-year-old Oscar may be autistic.) Then Master Caleb disappears for mysterious obligations on the continent, and the bane of Oscar’s existence, the magician’s apprentice, is killed. Beautifully written and elegantly structured, this fantasy is as real as it gets., Anne Ursu keeps readers turning the pages until the unexpected but satisfying ending of. Oscar is the magician’s hand, charged with collecting plants to concoct spells, and lives happily hidden away, with his cats, in the cellar of Master Caleb’s shop in the Barrow, outside the walled city of Asteri. Anne Ursus The Real Boy is a fantasy in the truest, deepest sense: it illuminates the human experience by giving substance and shape to that which is otherwise intangible. The Real Boy, Anne Ursus follow-up to her widely acclaimed and beloved middle grade fantasy Breadcrumbs, is a spellbinding tale of the power we all wield, great and small.

The Real Boy by Anne Ursu