You guys, this book was so great! I heard about it from several of the MMGM and #MGlitchat crowd, but it stayed on my TBR pile so long it nearly became a permanent fixture. Then when I did pick it up and started reading, I had trouble at first getting into the story because my brain kept analyzing whether it was living up to my expectation. Finally I sat myself down and told my brain to stop–and the story took flight in a magical, swooping journey of wonder!

Do you believe in magic? That’s the question this story poses, and it’s not just talking about abracadabra or tricks a magician might do. It seems to me that it’s talking about wonder, and mystery, and the things of the universe that defy explanation. It’s talking about staying open to the unexpected, and believing that we will never have all the answers–and that’s okay.

Micah Tuttle believes in magic. You could say it’s in his DNA since he was raised by his Grandpa Ephraim, and his grandpa is the kind of man who makes magic feel more real than tardy slips or school reports. The only catch is, Grandpa Ephraim isn’t doing well. At all. And Micah’s great aunt Gertrudis not only missed the magic-believing genes, she seems to have passed on all the ones having to do with kindness, or love. She’s counting down the days till her brother, Grandpa Ephraim, dies. And when he does die, Micah will have to go live with his great aunt who hates everything Micah loves. They need a miracle, but thankfully Grandpa Ephraim has one coming. He was promised a miracle when he was just a boy, and spent a week with the magical Circus Mirandus that Micah has heard about all his life. But what if the Lightbender has forgotten? What if Circus Mirandus can’t come through with Grandpa Ephraim’s miracle?

It’s all too much, and that’s how Micah finds himself at school without his half of the uber important social studies project. He spills the beans to his partner, Jenny, and she does what Jenny is best at. She gets organized, checks out research books, and offers to help Micah by doing his half the project and tracking down Circus Mirandus. The only catch is, she doesn’t believe it’s really magic. In fact she can’t conceive of magic possibly being real. And that could be a problem, because Circus Mirandus is on its way and it’s going to be up to Micah and Jenny to make Grandpa Ephraim’s miracle come through before the old man dies and despite the circus master’s refusal to help.

But oh, you guys! As wonderful as I’ve tried to show this book, the story is so much better! It feels like those moments when you were a child and someone first showed you a really good shadow puppet. Can you remember that? Or perhaps…when you saw your first shooting star, and it gave you chills all the way down your legs. Throughout the book there are occasionally gorgeous full-page black and white illustrations that really added that extra bit of mood to an already rich book. The language and unique way things were described also really tickled my fancy, as did several of the back ground characters, including the messenger parrot and helpful elephant.

But enough from me. Let’s see what Apricot-kitty thought of it:

“I’ll give it a solid meh. We spent an awful lot of time hearing about the circus without seeing inside it, and nobody’s magic seems all that useful. Except maybe the bird woman, but she’s hardly portrayed as a hero. Are you sure there’s a point to all this?”

Ugh, trust a cat. Okay, yes, I would have enjoyed spending more time inside the circus…and it did occur to me that the magic hadn’t stretched or grown much between the time when Grandpa Ephraim was a boy and Micah’s own visit to the circus. I can also even see the perspective some in the book put forward, that the circus seems like a lot of firepower mostly spinning its wheels without having a lot of impact. But then again, couldn’t the same be said of almost every loving, heroic action anyone in our world has ever taken? In the end, isn’t beauty and wonder and belief being kept alive enough? I think it is, and I loved the way Circus Mirandus shared that.

I hope you will have a very large dose of wonder and laughter in your lives over the coming week of Halloween, and can’t wait to hear what you’re reading! For the full Marvelous Middle Grade Monday roundup of reviews, giveaways, spotlights and interviews, stop by Greg Pattridge’s blog, and happy reading!

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