Boomi’s Boombox
by Shanthi Sekaran
Intermediate, Middle School    Tegen/HarperCollins    272 pp.
5/23    9780063051584    $18.99
e-book ed.  9780063051607    $10.99

It’s 2021 in San Francisco, the “second spring of the pandemic,” and twelve-year-old Boomi Gopalan is grieving the loss of her father, a physician who recently died of COVID-19. She’s also feeling dejected about a botched ballet audition: although she has had ambitions to be a dancer all her life, she isn’t selected to move on to the next level at her snobby ballet academy. When she’s given her father’s old boombox, Boomi discovers a crumpled note in the battery compartment that reads “you can change your life.” The boombox transports her back in time to 1986 to a small English town called Thumpton-on-Soar, where she meets her father as a boy. Boomi experiments with time travel, going back and forth as she tries, indeed, to change her life and somehow prevent her beloved father’s death. In the end, Boomi learns about the roots of her family’s secrets, finds joy in dancing again with the classical Indian dance of Bharatanyam, and fights against the racist treatment of South Asian immigrants in Thumpton. Boomi learns lessons about staying true to herself and her heritage and that a “big change can start with the smallest action of the very smallest person.” Sekaran’s well-crafted prose, sharp sense of humor, and knack for building suspense will keep readers interested until the surprising, time-bending conclusion.

From the July/August 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.