Zia Erases the World - Hardcover

Barton, Bree

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593350995 ISBN 13: 9780593350997

Verlag: Viking Books for Young Readers, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

"Luminous, empowering, and full of heart-healing truths, this is a novel that belongs on every shelf."—Katherine Applegate, Newbery Award winning author

For fans of Crenshaw and When You Trap a Tiger comes the extraordinary tale of a headstrong girl and the magical dictionary she hopes will explain the complicated feelings she can't find the right words for—or erase them altogether.

Zia remembers the exact night the Shadoom arrived. One moment she was laughing with her best friends, and the next a dark room of shadows had crept into her chest. Zia has always loved words, but she can’t find a real one for the fear growing inside her. How can you defeat something if you don’t know its name?

After Zia’s mom announces that her grouchy Greek yiayia is moving into their tiny apartment, the Shadoom seems here to stay. Until Zia discovers an old family heirloom: the C. Scuro Dictionary, 13th Edition.

This is no ordinary dictionary. Hidden within its magical pages is a mysterious blue eraser shaped like an evil eye. When Zia starts to erase words that remind her of the Shadoom, they disappear one by one from the world around her. She finally has the confidence to befriend Alice, the new girl in sixth grade, and to perform at the Story Jamboree. But things quickly dissolve into chaos, as the words she erases turn out to be more vital than Zia knew.

In this raw, funny, and at times heartbreaking middle grade debut, Bree Barton reveals how—with the right kind of help—our darkest moments can nudge us toward the light.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bree Barton lives in mythical Ithaca with her partner and two waggish dogs. She wrote her first book as "a humble child of ten"—her exact words in the query letter she sent to editors. Those editors told her to keep writing, and luckily, she did. Bree was eleven when her journey with the Shadoom began, and stories offered a special kind of balm. A handful of years later, she is the author of several young adult novels published in seven countries and four languages. Bree teaches dance and writing and loves connecting with readers of all ages. Zia Erases the World is her middle grade debut. 
 
 

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Every dictionary has secrets.

That’s to be expected, seeing as how a secret is made of words.

Dictionaries are heavy things, whole histories packed onto pages thin as spun silk. They are keepers of light and darkness, shimmer and shadow. Each word a patchwork of ideas stitched by many hands over many years. String enough words together, and you can hold all we have ever seen or felt or suffered.

Is it any wonder that sometimes, with a dash of magic and a dollop of mischief, a dictionary may choose to lessen its burden?

A vanished pronunciation?

A dropped definition?

A missing word?

I know of one such dictionary. It lies in a half-forgotten attic beneath a silver sheen of cobwebs, waiting for a girl who knows what it means to hold a secret.

I know of one such girl.

 

 

z |ˈzē| noun

1 the twenty-sixth and last letter of the English   alphabet

2 denoting a third unknown or mysterious person or thing: The dictionary was a family heirloom, passed down fromX to Y to Z.

3 the nickname of Zia Angelis, the hero of our twisty tale

 

On days I’m not brave enough to face the cafeteria, I eat lunch in the girls’ restroom. It’s not as bad as it sounds. You just sit on the floor, angle your body away from the toilet, and have all the napkins you could ever want in a soft, white roll.

Today I’m nibbling my marshmallow crème sandwich in the far stall when I hear voices.

My stomach seizes. I chose this restroom because it gets minimal traffic. I donot want people to know I’m a hopeless weirdling, unable to enjoy my lunch in the cafeteria with normal humans who sit in chairs.

“Just come over after school,” says a familiar voice. “We can swim.”

“Sasha has the most gorgeous pool,” chimes in another.

Silently, I stand and peek through the crack, careful not to let my glasses clank noisily against the stall door. Who are they talking to? I only see two girls checking their reflections in the bathroom mirror: Sasha fixing her Afro puffy twists, and Jay squinting disapprovingly at her thick blond eyebrows. I know these faces well. They’re my best friends.

At least, they used to be.

Last year I sat with Sasha Davis and Jay Peterson every day at lunch. We played this game where we’d make up stories about which teachers were secretly in love, then see who could invent the most ridiculous ship names to crack each other up. I was good at it. Like, really good. Once I made Jay laugh so hard she snorted raspberry limeade up her nose.

Then the Shadoom came out of nowhere, and I wasn’t laughing anymore.

“You can spend the night,” Sasha says to the mystery person. “If your parents are cool with it.”

“I can’t,” says a third voice. “My mom’s a week past her due date. She needs me home.”

My heart squeezes three beats into two.

The mystery person is Alice.

Alice Phan is the new girl in sixth grade. I heard she went to private school before coming to Ryden. She wears cool bomber jackets with colorful sewn-on patches and three hair bands that never leave her wrist: gray, red, violet.

Last week in gym class, we were playing dodgeball when school villain Thom Strong chucked a ball at a girl’s face and made her nose bleed. “Look!” he shouted. “Weirdo bleeds red!” Alice marched right up to Thom and told him he was an asinine bully. Usually I’m crackerjack with words, but even I had to look up asinine on Mom’s laptop later. I thought it was an excellent choice.

“I just figured you’d want to hang out,” Sasha says, “since you’re new and all.”

Alice buffs the bathroom tile with the toe of her combat boot. “Sure. Thanks.”

“Maybe once your mom has the baby?” Jay offers.

“It’s whatever,” says Sasha. But I can tell she’s half-hurt, half-annoyed. “See you.”

Her red high-tops squeak as she walks out of the restroom, Jay’s jeweled sandals tripping along behind.

Alice leans over a sink and exhales so much air I realize she’s been holding her breath. She runs a hand through her chin-length black hair. It’s hard to tell through the crack, but in the mirror her sharp eyes look shinier than normal.

“I see you,” she says. “There under the stall.”

Now I’m not breathing. Alice Phan is talking to me. Sure, we’ve saidhey and hi. One time I tried an enthusiastic howdy! (mortifying). But a real, multi-word conversation? Not a chance.

This is one of those moments that make or break you, the kind you read about in books.

I take a big sip of courageous air.

“No you don’t,” I say.

“I really do.”

“It’s your imagination speaking. You’re having a conver-sation with yourself.”

“Are you going to open the door?”

It’s no use hiding. My hand shakes as I reach for the silver handle from the inside. She reaches from the outside at the same moment. The door swings fiercely open.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.”

She nods toward my lunch. “I didn’t know my imagination brown-bagged it.”

“Even imaginations must be fed.”

Alice cocks her head, the hint of a smile perched on her lips. “It’s Zia, right?”

I nod, stunned—and pleased—she knows my name. I’m good at making people laugh, but only when I know them already. I’m not the kind of person who stands out in a crowd. Medium height, medium build, medium-fair skin, medium- brown eyes. I used to say I’m a “happy medium” sort of person. These days, only half of that is true.

“You can call me Z,” I say, a little too quickly. “Like the last letter in the alphabet. I mean, obviously it’s the last letter! Number twenty-six. Actually I’m half Greek, and the Greek alphabet has twenty-fourletters . . .” I need to stop talking.

“Twenty-four seems reasonable,” she says. “I’m Vietnamese, and our alphabet has twenty-nine letters, but six different tones. Mind if I sit with you, Z?”

“It’s a bathroom.”

“Yes, I gathered that.” Alice gestures toward the cafeteria. “I don’t think I have the strength to go back into the wild today.”

I understand perfectly and usher her into the stall.

It’s a tight fit, but we make it work. For maybe a whole minute we sit in silence, two sphinxes guarding either side of the toilet. I offer her half my marshmallow sandwich, and she says no. I offer her my pink apple, and she says yes. There’s a yellow bruise on the skin, but she eats carefully around it, then tips open the silver box for tampons and drops the core inside.

“You must think I’m weird,” I say, right as she says, “This is cool.”

She scrunches her nose. “What’s wrong with weird? I’d rather be a weirdling than boring.”

I feel a goopy gush of delight. Weirdling is my word, and somehow Alice knows it.

Shyly, I take off my glasses and use my sleeve to polish the rims. When the dark rims are shiny, it makes the tiny yellow suns pop.

Alice sighs and rests the back of her head against the stall door.

“Tell me something you want, Zia. And not, like, suede boots or a mocha cappuccino. If you were granted one wish, what...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Viking Books for Young Readers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593350995
• ISBN 13: 9780593350997
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: VIKING; https://www.penguin.com/overview-vikingbooks/; ; Attn: Andrea T Sheridan 1745 BROADWAY; New York; NY; 10019; USA
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