In the witty, fantastical The Chaos Monster, book one of Sayantani DasGupta's Secrets of the Sky series, fraternal twins find that magic can happen to anyone, especially if they live in that "state where a lot of strange things happen"--New Jersey!
Fourth-graders Kinjal and Kiya Rajkumar seem like "regular, normal brother-sister twins" who live in a "regular, normal town," until the night they sneak into their basement to find Baba's old folktale book hidden in a locked trunk. Suddenly, "a pair of foggy gray hands coming out of a shapeless tornado-like, whirling mass" appears and grabs their pet, Thums-Up--she has been "dognapped by a chaos monster." Two flying pakkhiraj horses, Snowy and Raat, land in the twins' yard and agree to fly them to their home, the Sky Kingdom, to find Thums-Up. The pakkhiraj, though, also need help. Bees are dying off in the Sky Kingdom, and they believe Kiya and Kinjal can fix their problem.
Sayantani DasGupta (Debating Darcy; The Serpent's Secret) has penned an imaginative tale in which creatures from traditional Bengali folktales and children's stories spring to life, and magic is a treasure "buried deep inside each of us." Her twins, wonderfully adept at humorous banter in the face of danger, grow from bickering siblings into heroes who make a difference. Sandra Tang's grayscale spot and full-page illustrations add a layer of storytelling, and break up blocks of text, making the book more approachable for young readers. Readers should be held captive by the twins' out-of-this-world adventures. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author