The Serpent's Secret by Sayantani DasGupta

Before its publication, I did my best to get my hands on a copy of The Serpent's Secret. I don't know why it should be so complicated to get a review copy from New York to a Canadian address! Between mailing issues and the promise of a copy via Scholastic Canada, and the failure of the e-galley to open....let's just say it's taken me half a year to open the book and start reading.I was hooked right from the first words in the dedication:

To immigrant parents and children everywhere--who imagine an idea called home into being through the telling of stories.

I was hooked by the character, twelve-year-old Kiranmala of Parsippany, New Jersey. Ordinary girl, right? Maybe not. Because Kiran's swiftly sucked into a spiraling story in which everything she knew to be reality is upended. Her parents are gone. There's a demon, a rakkhosh, eating everything in her kitchen. And who are those guys dressed in funny Halloween costumes? In short order, she's charged with no less a responsibility than saving the world. Each character is delightfully and lovingly crafted. Narrated in the first person,  the book hums with Kiran's personality, every scene infused with purpose, sly humor, and an unerring sense of the middle grade character on the brink.And I was hooked, finally, by the underlying worldview in Sayantani's book. This is a world in which immigrant identity isn't the issue, and one in which the cultural particulars not only ring utterly true but are regionally specific, going beyond the all too common representation of the entire subcontinent as one monocultural space. And there's the girl at the center of the story. She's the one who must be in control, even (maybe especially) when the ground under her feet has just given way! Magic can happen, the book suggests, in your space, wherever that is. We're all in it together, if we just let ourselves ride into a destiny waiting for us to take charge of it!Every girl at that puzzling, promising, in-between age of 12 ought to read this first book in the Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond series. Look for Book 2, The Game of Stars.