Lost Legends: Diamond in the Rough

by Jen Calonita

Overview

The second book in a new middle grade series that features the adventures of Disney’s most lovable roguish heroes as kids!

Before he defeated Jafar…Aladdin was just a poor boy in streets of Agrabah. “Do you trust me?”

Twelve-year-old Aladdin has spent his entire life roaming the desert as a part of a tribe of nomads. He has nothing to his name except the stars in the sky, the clothes on his back, and a peculiar necklace left to him by his late mother. But that doesn’t bother Aladdin—he doesn’t want much. If he had three wishes, he would only ask for one thing: a home. A place to belong.

When Aladdin is separated from his tribe in Agrabah, he feels drawn to the city’s bustling streets. This is a place of possibilities, one that Aladdin might even be able to call his own. Facing a whole new world with magic lurking around every corner, Aladdin soon joins a group of “collectors” who teach him what it means to be a street rat. Aladdin will need to put those skills and his good heart to the test when whispers of a mysterious “diamond” catch up with him and threaten to destroy his new home.

Filled with heart-pounding perils and rambunctious mischief, the Lost Legends series explores the untold origins of Disney’s most infamous rogue boys.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781368048613
Publisher:	Disney Press
Publication date:	09/20/2022
Series:	Disney's Lost Legends Series
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	138,465
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 5.70(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Jen Calonita is the author of the award-winning Secrets of My Hollywood Life and Fairy Tale Reform School series. She lives in New York with her husband, two boys, and two chihuahuas named Captain Jack Sparrow and Ben Kenobi. A huge Disney fan, Jen dreams of moving the whole family into Cinderella's castle at Walt Disney World. Visit her online at: www.jencalonitaonline.com and Twitter @jencalonita.

Editorial Reviews

"[A] briskly paced, suspenseful, action- and magic-filled adventure.... If not a carpet ride, an entertaining journey readers will appreciate."—Kirkus

From the Publisher

2022-07-13
You thought you knew Aladdin?

Forget flying carpets, lamps with resident genies, princesses, and singing. Readers first meet the legendary character as an infant. His parents flee across the desert, desperately seeking refuge for their very special son. His mother slips a necklace—bearing a charm shaped like half of a beetle—around her child’s neck, hoping the amulet will protect him. When readers next meet Aladdin, he’s 12 and living with nomadic camel and goat herders. He enjoys his life yet believes he doesn’t belong here and longs for a permanent home. He’s still wearing the charm, his only memento of his parents. Arriving with his foster family in the Middle Eastern city of Agrabah, Aladdin is separated from them by a parade and a sandstorm and eventually falls in with a young band of urchins who live with and are cared for by Mukhtar, who teaches them to “rescue” precious objects and who will prove to be key to shaping Aladdin’s destiny. So will an evil sorcerer who wears a half-beetle talisman himself and requires Aladdin’s half for his own nefarious purposes. This novel delivers a briskly paced, suspenseful, action- and magic-filled adventure in which Aladdin, a well-realized, relatable protagonist, discovers his extraordinary true identity as the “Diamond in the Rough” and finds true friends. The Middle Eastern setting is evoked well, with references to food and clothing.

If not a carpet ride, an entertaining journey readers will appreciate. (Fiction. 9-12)

Kirkus Reviews