The Root of Magic

by Kathleen Benner Duble

Overview

A deeply felt sibling story set in a town where people have a mysterious magical power and one girl is determined to discover what it is, for readers of Lauren Myracle and Ingrid Law. 

Willow knows the unknown is scary. Especially when your little brother has been sick for a long time and nobody has been able to figure out why. All Willow wants is for her brother to get better and for her her life to go back to normal.

But after a bad stroke of luck, Willow and her family find themselves stranded in an unusual town in the middle of nowhere and their life begins to change in the most unexpected way. Willow soon discovers that the town isn't just unusual—it's magical—and the truth is more exciting that she ever imagined.

Will Willow find that this could be the secret to saving her family—or discover that the root of magic could lead them to something greater?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525578536
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	06/11/2019
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Kathleen Benner Duble is a critically acclaimed and award-winning author of many historical novels for children. Her books include Phantoms of the Snow, The Sacrifice, and Quest. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband. Visit her at www.kathleenduble.com or on Twitter at @KathleenDuble.

Read an Excerpt

“Are we going to die?” Wisp asks from the depths of his blankets in the backseat. Mom’s hands whiten on the wheel of the car, and her mouth tightens.
 
In the front seat beside their mother, Willow tugs nervously on her long hair.
 
DuChard Unspoken Family Rule #1: You are never, ever to say the words “death” or “die” when Wisp is within earshot.
 
But because Wisp himself is asking the question, Mom has no option but to pretend she hasn’t heard him.
 
“Of course not,” Willow tells her brother, when their mom says nothing. “It’s just snow, Wisp.”
Yet even as she tries to convince her brother, Willow realizes she is lying. They have been driving in the dark for over two hours in what the weathermen on the radio are calling “the blizzard of the century.”
 
It is four days after Christmas, and the first storm of the year. Usually, a December snowfall in the Northeast tumbles in like a light blanket, one you pull up just as the temperature begins to dip—fluffy but not too heavy.
 
But this storm is monstrous. Willow imagines it as a great roaring beast—irritated by the release of aerosols in Russia, the exhaust of cars in China, the heat of nuclear reactors in the United States, and other global warming factors.
 
Her science teacher has said that hurricanes, fires, and tsunamis have been increasing in number and intensity. Why, Willow wonders, should snow sit on the sidelines?
 
When they left that afternoon, the flakes were light. Then the weather changed—faster than they could change their plans. Now Willow wishes they had stayed the night in some safe, warm hotel in Canada. But it’s too late. They are committed to driving home.
 
Usually on car trips, Willow listens to music or writes in her journal, but tonight she simply stares into the dark night and icy roads, preparing to point out any danger that might suddenly throw them off course.
 
“Do you think we’re going to be swallowed up by this storm and suffocate in this car?” her brother asks. His weary voice floats softly up to the front seat. “Are they going to find us months from now, when everything melts, just skeletons, since we have no food and only a few bottles of water?”
 
In the front seat, Willow rolls her eyes at her brother’s bizarre questions.
 
“Don’t be silly, Wisp,” their mom finally snaps.
 
But a minute later, she sighs and rubs her eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. I’m just tense from driving.”
 
Willow says nothing. She knows she is to blame for their being on this road at this hour, just below the Canadian border in the wilderness of Maine, where even their car’s headlights seem unable to penetrate the wall of white in front of them.
 
“Dad can drive in anything,” Wisp says. Willow goes still.
 
DuChard Unspoken Family Rule #2: Never mention Dad in front of Mom, especially when she is already under so much stress that the lines on her face look like cracked dry clay.
 
“Do you see your father here?” Mom asks.
 
Her brother goes mute, seeming to recognize his mistake, leaving Willow to answer her mom.
Willow should call out her brother for this cowardliness, but she won’t. Instead, as usual these days, she swallows her annoyance with him, forcing the heat of it back inside.
 
She shakes her head as a response. It’s safer that way. And she realizes in that moment that she, like her brother, is a bit of a coward these days, too.
 
“It was your father’s last-minute cancellation that left us having to drive all the way to New Brunswick for this hockey tournament in the first place,” their mother goes on, in the tone that Willow has come to know as worse than the taste of sour milk. “He could have made that decision earlier, and then you could have ridden with one of your teammates. But no, once again, he waits until the last minute. And now, as usual, he’s nowhere to be found, leaving me on my own, driving through a horrific storm while he’s holed up in some basketball court, all warm and toasty. And it was his idea that you play hockey in the first place, so I really don’t understand why it’s me doing the hauling around, especially with a . . .”
 
Their mother goes suddenly silent.
 
In her mind, Willow finishes the sentence for her mother. “. . . with a sick child.”
 
“Whatever,” Mom finally says softly. “Your dad should be here, not me.”
 
DuChard Unspoken Family Rule #3: When their mom starts going on about their dad, it’s best to act like you’re facing an angry bear and, as Willow’s Girl Scout leader once told them, “Hold perfectly still and play dead.”
 
So Willow turns statue-like, and she thinks about the game.
 
The game they won—the big save she made.
Willow can still feel the puck hitting hard against her glove as she raised it a few inches above her shoulder. And she remembers the complete and utter amazement when she realized the puck was there—safe, stopped, just as the buzzer sounded and the game ended. Incredibly, they had won by that one, single stopping of a goal.
 
Willow can still hear the crowd screaming her name and feel her best friend, Elise, jumping on top of her before the rest of the team piled on, all smelling of sweat from their hard-won battle. It had been a sweet save, a sweet win.
 
And Willow wishes her dad had been there. Because, unlike her mom, he would have known that feeling, understood that victory, cheered her on as a winner. He’d played hockey in college. He knew.
 
But he couldn’t find a substitute to coach his high school basketball team this weekend. Instead, it was her mom waiting for her at the end of the game, tapping her foot during the winning-team pictures, shooing Willow off the ice, urging her to change quickly, barely able to wait half an hour before packing them up and starting the drive home, worrying and fussing about the snow.
 
Now, with this scary drive, the joy of that miracle win in Willow’s otherwise miracleless life has deflated quickly, like bubble gum that has gone flat and tasteless.
 
“Are we going to be lost forever?” Wisp asks.
 
He must feel that even though the blizzard is still raging outside their car, the “Mom storm” has passed, but Willow isn’t so sure.
 
“Maybe we’ll be like Rip Van Winkle and get lost in these hills and sleep for centuries,” Wisp says.
 
“Rip Van Winkle left his poor wife alone to handle everything herself while he was out having a good time and a long nap,” Mom snaps again.
 
As Willow thought: her brother was wrong. Neither storm is backing off.

Editorial Reviews

05/01/2019

Gr 5–7—Twelve-year-old Willow, her sick brother Wisp, and their mother are driving home from a hockey game in a blizzard when they are left stranded in the snow and mysteriously rescued by two townspeople from Kismet, ME. With no cell phones and no way out, Willow's mother begins to panic about Wisp, whose undiagnosed illness means frequent visits to the hospital and constant risk of death. While her mother frets, Willow notices strange things about the town. The innkeeper knows to set out an extra cot in Willow's room for Wisp before she has even met them, and the cook at the diner seems to have their food ready for them before they even order. It is not until Willow's worried mother becomes overly confident that Wisp will be okay that Willow seeks the truth about Kismet. This book attempts to answer questions about free will but often falls short. Though readers will sympathize with the choices Willow and her mother must make, other characters lack depth—particularly Wisp, who feels more like a plot device than a fully developed character. While it takes Willow time to guess Kismet's secret, readers will be quick to figure out the twist. VERDICT An additional purchase.—Katharine Gatcomb, Portsmouth Public Library, NH

School Library Journal

2019-03-03

A 12-year-old with a sick brother chooses between supernaturally comforting certainty and painful reality.

Returning from Canada, Willow, her mother, and her 8-year-old, chronically ill brother, Wisp, nearly die in a car accident in rural Maine. Thank goodness for their rescuers, a friendly couple who bring them to a B&B in an isolated snowbound community. Willow's mother panics about Wisp, whose extremely rare, undiagnosed condition means frequent hospitalizations and constant risk of death, but the snowstorm and the accident have left them without cellphones, car, or escape route. At least the people of tiny Kismet, Maine (all 173 of them), are helpful and kind—if also a little spooky. It's as if the locals know what's going to happen before it comes to pass. Can Willow cope with her mother's obsessive overprotectiveness of Wisp, get home to Vermont, and learn Kismet's strange secret? The townsfolk all appear to be white, like Willow and her family, and Franco-American—descended from early Acadians. Kismet's not remotely believable (this infinitesimal, magically isolated village somehow supports both a hospital and a movie theater), and the magical rules are only slightly more credible. But the emotional truths Willow and her mother confront are wrenching and genuine, albeit not as meaningful as they'd be if Wisp were a fully developed character in his own right.

Works better as fable than as fantasy. (Fiction. 9-12)

Kirkus Reviews