Goblin Market
by Diane Zahler
Intermediate     Holiday    256 pp.   g
8/22    978-0-8234-5081-7    $17.99
e-book ed. 978-0-8234-5292-7    $10.99

Lizzie “sees” sounds as colors and is sensitive to direct eye contact and being touched; her older sister, Minka, looks out for her and paints the colors Lizzie describes. One day Minka comes home from the market rhapsodic over a new vendor—a handsome young man selling the most delectable fruit. Over the next few weeks, Minka grows pale for love of him, loses her hair, and falls into a ­coma-like sleep. The girls’ neighbor Jakob helps Lizzie learn what is wrong with Minka: upon investigation, they suspect she’s been enchanted by a zdusze, a goblin who steals away children and young women. The ­pastoral surroundings (and particularly Lizzie’s description of rich sound-colors) create a lush setting for the folkloric ensorcelled-by-goblins plot, with its dreamy depictions of fruit and longing and with sprinklings of ethnological details from Eastern European cultures. On her quest to save her sister, Lizzie faces down many of her “worries” (going to the market, talking to strangers, knocking on people’s doors) while also making use of her strengths (blunt honesty, unsentimental perception, bravery regarding snakes). The ­climax delivers some breath-quickening action, but this warmly reassuring tale, with its nontraditional protagonist, will keep readers engrossed from beginning to end.

From the July/August 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.