INDIGO’S STAR

It might be eight-year-old Rose who steals readers’ hearts in McKay’s delightful companion to Saffy’s Angel (2003). The warm, witty Casson family is back with their color-coded cast of kids, their absentminded artist-mother, and their absent artist-father, who lives in London. Amid the mayhem, Rose is the one who tries to keep things together, writing to her father at every given opportunity, beseeching him to rescue the family from disaster. Unfortunately, he doesn’t think 19-year-old Cadmium’s flirtatious suitors, a near fire, or an abundance of soup constitute family emergencies. Along with her sister Saffy and friend Sarah, Rose also worries about her brother Indigo, who endures bullying at school. She stubbornly wills him to join forces with Tom, an intriguing boy visiting from America, who likes to tell tall tales that are true, climb great heights, and play his guitar. Plot threads and characters mesh satisfyingly—and, as ever, McKay’s dialogue, the novel’s essence, is brilliant. Readers submerged in the happy din of the family’s conversations will wish they could be adopted by the Cassons. (Fiction. 8-12)