Love Nancy Drew? Enjoy stories with a multicultural flair? Like smart tween girls whose spunk shines through? Is so, you’ll really enjoy debut author Sheela Chari’s Vanished. It’s full of music, mystery, coincidences, deception and fun.
11 year old Neela dreams of being a famous musician, playing her antique Indian instrument, the veena, but in reality when she’s in front of an audience, she’s full of stage fright. When her grandmother in Indian mysteriously sends Neela an heirloom veena- the one she plays most often that’s intricately carved with a strange dragon – Neela feels that she may finally have the instrument that will help her get over her stage fright and become the musician she knows she can be. Neela takes her veena to school for a cultural “show-and-tell” and on the way home from school that day, her heirloom is stolen. Soon, strange clues emerge: a teakettle bearing a dragon very similar to the one on her veena; a threatening note; suspicious adults telling Neela half-truths; and stories about a famous veena musician who was tragically killed. Neela enlists the help of her best friend Pavi, a boy at school she thought she couldn’t stand, Mike, and Lynne, a girl in her class who seems to have something to hide, to try and piece together the clues that all point back to India and the famous music shop in the legend of a magical veena that has a history of vanishing and then reappearing.
Neela’s sleuthing and perseverance are enjoyable to read, catchy, and quickly paced. The twists and turns in the plot move the book along and are just shadowy enough that the reader can’t guess the outcome of the who-done-it before Chari reveals it. Neela’s Indian heritage is interlaced in the story well – most of the time, Vanished is simply a well plotted, well executed mystery – but then the tidbits of Indian culture, history, and even the occasional “fitting in” issue add just the right amount of something special to this fun book.
- Posted by Cori