THE INVISIBLE BOY

A budding investigative journalist begins her summer as a suspicious neighborhood sleuth until she finds new friends—and a dangerous secret.

Nadia’s a comic-book lover and reporter-in-training. Like her hero, Lois Lane, she sees supervillains and superheroes everywhere in her mostly white neighborhood. Paddle Boy is the neighborhood villain who once broke her canoe paddle. Invisible Boy is the local man of mystery: a boy her own age who appears out of nowhere to save a dog or leave lemonade for a nice old lady before vanishing again. What a fabulous scoop for Nadia, girl reporter! When the three kids become friends—for Paddle Boy is not the dastardly villain of Nadia’s imagination—she wonders why Invisible Boy is always gardening, doesn’t attend school, and is always nervously hiding. A conversation with her aunt, a human rights lawyer, leaves Nadia shaken. Eventually the superhero games turn grimly real, but plenty of coincidences keep the adventure optimistic. Each chapter is punctuated with a page from the comic-book adventures of Nadia Quick, Girl Reporter, featuring both villains and heroes—and, sometimes, realities too dark for a witty superhero quip. Informational content about how to recognize and report suspected human trafficking is embedded in an epilogue in the form of a news article written by the most intrepid of middle school reporters.

A grim reality approachably and even engagingly presented.