No location is out of reach for a good Navigator with the right map. In Heidi Heilig's debut fantasy, The Girl from Everywhere, 16-year-old Nix Song, the half-Chinese daughter of Captain Slate, has only known life aboard their time-traveling pirate ship, the Temptation. Brought on board as a baby after her mother's death in 1868 Honolulu, Nix has seen plenty of adventure, traveling via a secret sort of "Navigation" with her erratic, opium-addled father and a ragtag, bare-bones crew to places and times both real and fantastic. Their ultimate quest has always been the same: to find the right historical map to bring Slate back to 1868 Hawaii and save Nix's mother. The trouble is, no one is sure what will become of Nix if Slate is successful. Will she simply vanish from the Earth? And would her father care if she did? As Nix quietly plans to make her escape, the crew of the Temptation gets caught up in the political turmoil of the last days of imperial Hawaii, an intriguing time and place lushly described in vivid detail that will have readers feeling the tropical breezes.
This thrilling swashbuckler--steeped in history, myth and legend--finds a solid anchor in its colorful characters, from the charming Persian street thief Kashmir who is constantly flirting with Nix, to Captain Slate, the modern New Yorker. While the rules of time travel can be confusing at times, the story itself settles into a comfortable rhythm. Fascinating, thought-provoking and wonderfully imagined, The Girl from Everywhere will spark the adventurer inside every reader. --Kyla Paterno, former children's & YA book buyer