The Real Boy, Anne Ursu's follow-up to her widely acclaimed and beloved middle grade fantasy Breadcrumbs, is a spellbinding tale of the power we all wield, great and small.
On an island on the edge of an immense sea there is a city, a forest, and a boy named Oscar. Oscar is a shop boy for the most powerful magician in the village, and spends his days in a small room in the dark cellar of his master's shop grinding herbs and dreaming of the wizards who once lived on the island generations ago. Oscar's world is small, but he likes it that way. The real world is vast, strange, and unpredictable. And Oscar does not quite fit in it.
But now that world is changing. Children in the city are falling ill, and something sinister lurks in the forest. Oscar has long been content to stay in his small room in the cellar, comforted in the knowledge that the magic that flows from the forest will keep his island safe. Now even magic may not be enough to save it.
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Genre: #YA #MiddleGrade #Fantasy
Disability rep: #ND #AutismSpectrumDisorder*
Publication date: #September2013 #2013year
Awards won: National Book Award Nominee, Young People’s Literature (2013), California Young Readers Medal Nominee, Intermediate (2017), Minnesota Book Award Nominee, Young People’s Literature (2014)
*Note: While not explicitly stated on-page, this has been confirmed by the author in a lovely interview she did with Disability in Kidlit here!