A Sprinkle of Spirits

Love, Sugar, Magic: A Sprinkle of Spirits by Anna Meriano

Children’s novel for grades 4-8; fantasy

This is the second book in the Love, Sugar, Magic series. I loved the first book, which came out at the very beginning of 2018, and I’ve been looking forward to this new installment for a while. The books are about a family-owned bakery where there’s a little bit of magic in everything they make.  Each woman in the Logrono family is a bruja, which is the Spanish word for a witch or sorceress. Usually, they don’t have their powers and don’t know about the magic until the age of fifteen, but eleven-year-old Leo is the exception. In the first book, A Dash of Trouble, Leo discovered the family secret and, after a comical mishap, her family eventually decided to let her learn how to use magic properly. By the time the second book starts a couple months later, Leo has put a lot of effort into studying spellcraft and memorizing lists of herbs. In fact, she’s having a hard time balancing her magical studies with her friendships, and that’s where the conflict starts.

A Sprinkle of Spirits takes place during the winter break from school, while Leo’s family is hard at work preparing for the Dia de los Reyes celebration. (Dia de los Reyes, aka Three Kings’ Day, is on January 6) It’s probably worth noting that this is in Texas, so this isn’t really a very wintery setting. Leo’s friend Caroline has just come back from a trip visiting family in Costa Rica. She wants to talk to Leo about it; it’s been rough on her because this was her first time making the trip without her mother, who died less than a year ago. But Leo doesn’t have a lot of time on her hands, and her sisters are critical of having a non-bruja spending so much time in the bakery. It’s bad enough that Caroline is in on the secret and that she helps Leo study, but having her there as a distraction in the bakery is just too much. Leo is so determined to prove her worth as a bruja that she doesn’t really stand up for Caroline, and it seems that their friendship is in jeopardy.

Then the spirits show up. They’re not exactly ghosts, and they’re definitely not zombies. They’re real, live people who had been dead for years. First, it’s Leo’s Abuela, who wakes her up first thing in the morning, and then Abuela’s friend Mrs. Morales shows up at their door. Then it turns out that a couple other spirits had appeared in other parts of town during the night. Leo isn’t sure what happened, and she doesn’t think it’s really her fault. But her sisters do. And they all know that they have to get the spirits back to el Otro Lado (The Other Side) right away. At first, they’re just vaguely concerned about what could happen if the spirits stay, but as they continue researching, their fears are confirmed. Apparently, returned spirits can’t survive for long, and it’s only a matter of time before they disintegrate forever. They have to go back, but this is easier said than done. Even though they understand the gravity of the situation, they each have unfinished business that they want to attend to first. Mrs. Morales wants to talk to her son, the father of Leo’s friend Tricia, about his potentially terminal illness. He hasn’t even told Tricia about it, but she’s overheard enough to know what’s happening and she is scared and upset. One man wants to fix up his garden, another is a former music teacher who wants to check on his piano, and one is the former mayor, who wishes he could stay for the upcoming election. In fact, he’d like to run for mayor again. Abuela’s unfinished business is to tell Leo and her sisters that they don’t actually have to choose between their roles as brujas and their relationships with their friends; they can indeed have both. On that note, Leo decides to enlist the help of various friends from school. Together, they must round up the spirits and figure out how to send them back.

So far, I’ve left out one significant twist which isn’t really a surprise ending, because it comes up around the middle of the book. It turns out that Caroline is a bruja, too. There isn’t a magically-run family business in her case, but she finds out that there’s some history of magical abilities in her family, too. In an attempt to bring back her mother using what little she knows from helping Leo study, she accidentally opened the way for the other spirits. What she doesn’t know is that she actually did bring back her mother, who has been hiding from her all day. Apparently, it just isn’t a good idea to bring back a recently deceased family member, given the fact that the spirits can’t actually stay for long. So Leo has to send Caroline’s mother back with the other spirits without Caroline ever knowing. But in all other regards, she realizes that she doesn’t have to shut Caroline out from her life as a bruja.

This is a great middle-grade book about family, friendship, and coping with death. But on a more superficial level, it’s a fun story with elements of mystery, adventure, and fantasy. The characters’ Hispanic heritage and culture is a selling point, too, especially since this is not exactly realistic fiction. (It can be hard to find good fantasy books that represent cultural minorities) And while this certainly isn’t a horror story, the presence of the spirits and the discussion of el Otro Lado will appeal to readers who like spooky books.

As a final note, though, I’d recommend reading the first book before this one. Although A Sprinkle of Spirits reiterates all of the major plot points from A Dash of Magic, the major characters are only briefly reintroduced. I expect that any reader who doesn’t know about Leo’s four older sisters from the first book will have a hard time relating to them or keeping them straight in this book. Besides that, Leo’s previous frustration with being the baby of the family sets the stage for the beginning of this book, when she’s somewhat neglecting her friendships because she’s so eager to please her family. There’s a clear logical progression from one story to the next.

A Dash of Trouble

Love Sugar Magic: A Dash of Trouble by Anna Meriano, 2018

Children’s novel for grades 4-8; fantasy

Eleven-year-old Leo (short for Leonora) is upset that she isn’t allowed to take the day off from school to help out in her family’s bakery. Tomorrow is the Dia de los Muertos festival in her small Texas town, and there’s so much work to do that Leo’s four older sisters are all spending the day in the bakery. Leo is tired of being told she’s too young. In an act of defiance, she sneaks to the bakery and hides to spy on her mother, aunt, and sisters. That’s when she discovers that her family has a big secret. (And it’s yet another thing that she’s left out of because she’s too young)  All the women in her family are brujas, Spanish for “witches” or “magicians.” Leo is desperate to learn more. While snooping, she finds a spellbook that answers some of her questions, and she manages to coax some information out of her sisters as well. When Leo begins trying her own hand at magic, things predictably go wrong due to her lack of magical experience and knowledge.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this series continues. I feel like there’s a lot of fun stuff that Meriano can do with this premise, and the characters are likable and distinctive enough to keep readers interested in following their ongoing story. The mostly-positive family relationships and usually-good intentions of the characters sets a light-hearted, feel-good tone. (There’s some bickering, selfishness, and poor choices, but just enough to be believable) Although most of the major plot points are results of wrong things that Leo does, her thought process is presented in a way that almost makes her decisions seem natural. And her narrative voice (although the text is in third person) is very authentic. It realistically captures the thoughts and feelings of an eleven-year-old girl who feels left out and is desperate to achieve things and prove her capabilities. Despite the fantasy elements, this story also has strong appeal factors for middle-grade readers who generally prefer realistic fiction.

Another thing that makes this book noteworthy, at least to me, is the Hispanic characters and cultural backdrop. My library is in a community with a large Hispanic population, so that’s definitely a demographic niche that I want to be well-represented in our collection. But most middle-grade books featuring Hispanic characters are serious realistic fiction, and many are specifically about social issues. It’s great to have those books, but some kids would rather read a fun book about magical cookies. And I think that a lot of my library kids share Leo’s conviction that Dia de los Muertos is the best holiday, so it’s great that this book involves that celebration without portraying it as something foreign and exotic. Leo doesn’t speak Spanish fluently, but most of her family members do, and there are a lot of Spanish words and phrases in this book. I don’t just mean that the characters use a few well-known Spanish words like “hola” and “gracias”; there are entire recipes that Leo reads in Spanish and must translate in order to understand.

But maybe the best thing of all about this story is that it’s about baking. Cookies and breads are a constant motif, and the book has a good number of recipes at the end of the book. (The ones interspersed throughout the text call for magical ingredients like spiderwebs, signatures, and people’s eyelashes, in addition to actually edible things) Magic is repeatedly described as having a distinctive spice-like smell. All of the sugar and spice in the story add up to make the overall effect, well, sweet. I’d recommend this book to most middle-grade readers and to adults with a vested interest in middle-grade fiction.