She Is Not Invisible

Printz-winner Sedgwick (Midwinterblood) again demonstrates his remarkable versatility, trading the generations-spanning horrors of his recent books for an equally tense contemporary story about coincidence, obsession, and the ways in which we see the world. When 16-year-old Laureth Peak learns that a notebook belonging to her father, a well-known author, has surfaced in New York City, she’s sure something is wrong. Using one of her mother’s credit cards, she buys plane tickets for herself and her younger brother, Benjamin, and flies from London to J.F.K., embarking on a search that takes them across three boroughs. Why would Laureth involve seven-year-old Benjamin in such a risky, impulsive trip? Because she needs him: she’s blind. As the mystery builds, Sedgwick includes increasingly frenzied excerpts from Laureth’s father’s notebook to introduce concepts like apophenia, numinousness, and synchronicity, which are rattling around his brain. Through questions of what—if anything—coincidences mean and a careful and acute account of Laureth’s experience of the world (including the brave, hardened exterior she maintains to keep from becoming invisible in others’ eyes), Sedgwick challenges readers to rethink how they look at life itself. Ages 12–up. (Apr.)