Beneath the Sugar Sky

McGuire’s delicious third book (after 2017’s Down Among the Sticks and Bones) to feature the teens of Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children—kids who have found doors to fantastical worlds and are desperate to return to them—opens with a girl falling from the sky into a pond on school grounds, causing quite a stir. Rini Onishi has come from a world called Confection to get back her mother, Sumi. Inconveniently, Sumi is dead, and she’ll need to be rebuilt from the bones up so that Rini’s life won’t be undone. Several of the strange children at the home offer to help Rini, but when they get to Confection, they’re captured by the fearsome Queen of Cakes. What follows is a lush, darkly whimsical adventure full of wonders such as a pink soda sea, candy corn fields, and a castle made of gingerbread, all made grim by the characters’ desperation to get Rini’s mother back before it’s too late. Readers will be thrilled to see old friends and meet new ones in this scrumptious tale that emphasizes acceptance, kindness, and the enduring value of friendship. Agent: Diana Fox, Fox Literary. (Jan.)