WINNIE ZENG UNLEASHES A LEGEND

Already overwhelmed with obligations, an 11-year-old Chinese American girl reluctantly answers the call for a hero.

Fueled by parental expectations, Winnie has always strived to be the best. It doesn’t help that her rival, David Zuo, bested her (again) at their last piano competition and has transferred to her public middle school from his fancy private one. As if things couldn’t get worse, Winnie is still grieving the fact that her once-close relationship with her older sister, Lisa, has turned antagonistic. When the sixth grade homerooms hold a bake sale competition, Winnie finds her grandmother’s old cookbook and bakes a batch of mooncakes. Taking a bite, she unwittingly unlocks both her shaman powers and the spirit of Lao Lao, her late maternal grandmother. The jampacked story reveals that Winnie is a descendant of a line of shamans who must train with Lao Lao to capture malevolent spirits before they grow more powerful and wreak chaos in the human world. As Winnie navigates demon-possessed teachers, conflict in family relationships, and academic pressures, Zhao provides space for her to sincerely question whether she can handle it all and to discover nuances within her family dynamics. The exact parameters governing the spirits’ interactions with the human world are highly detailed, but the big picture feels hazy; a hinted sequel may provide more answers.

An ambitious fantasy outing.