Zia Erases the World

Word enthusiast Zia Angelis, who has “medium-fair skin,” misses the days of giggling over invented portmanteaus with her two best friends, but the onset of sudden depressive episodes—which she calls Shadoom, for “the room of shadows inside me”—has isolated the sixth grader and strained her once-close relationship with her stressed single mother. Things are further disrupted when Zia’s Greek Yiayia moves in with the family, bringing with her an old family dictionary whose pages are embedded with an eraser shaped like a matáki, or evil eye, charm. Finding that using the eraser to remove words from the dictionary also disappears their real-life referents, Zia begins to erase terms. To help others, she nixes audition and wasp, then moves on to those that remind her of the Shadoom; soon, Zia even gains the self-confidence to befriend cool new girl Alice Phan, who is Vietnamese. But erasing words such as fear and pain cause staggering consequences: Zia’s mother quits her two much-needed jobs, and even the beloved family cat has a dangerous encounter. Featuring a witty first-person narrator and threading in myriad cultural and etymological details, Barton’s (the Heart of Thorns series) lightly magical middle grade debut emphasizes a potent message about “finding light between the shadows.” Ages 8–12. Agent: Andrea Somberg, Harvey Klinger. (Apr.)