Starred review from April 4, 2016
In a twisting, harrowing story set over a few weeks, Altebrando (My Life in Dioramas) brings readers to a small town where six kindergartners disappeared without a trace and left an entire community grieving. The story begins on the day that five of the six return, 11 years later, their memories gone. Two of the five, Lucas and Scarlett, narrate, along with Avery, the sister of the child still missing; their alternating voices begin to piece together the mystery behind the “Leaving” and try to heal wounds of anger and loss among those left behind. In order to represent the teens’ fractured memories, Altebrando toys with the formatting and layout of the text: Scarlett’s words rise and fall in places, stretch, and are broken up by scatterings of slash marks, and Lucas’s thoughts are repeatedly interrupted by fragmented images (“bloody backpack gun carousel”) set in capitalized white text in black boxes. It’s engrossing, both as a thriller and a meditation on memory—its limits, its loss, and the ways it deceives and constructs identity. Ages 13–up. Agent: David Dunton, Harvey Klinger.
July 30, 2018
Reader Vacker does an outstanding job of portraying the trio of main characters in Altebrando’s unsettling YA novel set in a small town in Florida where, 11 years earlier, six children disappeared on their first day of kindergarten. The story opens as five of the six missing kids suddenly return with no memory of what happened. The novel’s alternating chapters are devoted to two of the returning teens, Scarlett and Lucas, and Avery, whose older brother is still missing. Scarlett is poetic, perplexed, and surprisingly tolerant of her mother, who’s obsessed with space aliens. Lucas is a realist with a potential for volatility that’s tested when his father dies soon after Lucas’s return. Avery’s chapters mark her as good-hearted, moody, impatient, and selfish—in short, the novel’s most believable teenager. Other characters, though well-performed, are strictly minor, including the remaining kidnap victims. In the print edition, Altebrando uses word art—dashes, slashes, white text in black boxes—to convey the moods of Scarlett and Lucas, but Vacker’s on-target emotional performances are equally effective in capturing the characters’ highs and lows. Vacker’s trenchant and stirring performance will captivate listeners from start to finish. Ages 13–up. A Bloomsbury hardcover.