I admit it. When I read the last two pages of “Abby Carnelia’s One and Only Magical Power,” a novel for 8- to-12-year-olds, I cried. On the surface this is a tale about a regular girl with a pointless magical power. But it got me with its message of discovering and appreciating your own gifts — even if those gifts mainly consist of the ability to spin a hard-boiled egg by pulling on your ears.
The moral of the story may not be all that original, but its power here lies in the way the author, David Pogue, tells it. Pogue, the personal-technology columnist for The New York Times and a former magic nerd himself, clearly has a lot of affection for kids. Along the way, the novel — his first book for children — does drive through some potholes. I like the idea of Abby’s being run-of-the-mill, unremarkable, even dull. The only problem is that you’re reading a book about someone who’s run-of-the-mill, unremarkable, even dull. Worse, she sometimes talks in that all too recognizable tone: “Mom, just a second, O.K.? I’m kind of in the middle of something here.” Sometimes novels can be too realistic.
Of course, the book’s message works only if Abby is unextraordinary. Certainly, young readers will find her approachable as a character, relentlessly unintimidating as she is, and that’s probably good.
The plot has a pleasing hum and whir. Abby discovers her power one afternoon in the kitchen, while making chef’s salad. Her mom notices that Abby is missing an earring, and when Abby’s hands shoot up to her earlobes to take inventory, the egg on the counter suddenly pirouettes. Soon she’s off to magic camp, in the hope of understanding this odd talent that makes her feel like a freak.
At Camp Cadabra, the knuckles are white, the emotions are on a roller coaster and before you know what hit you, the elephant is in the room. While Pogue himself seems to lack the power to make clichés disappear, his novel has plenty of action. Abby catches the attention of a shady, fat-fingered counselor named Ferd, “not Fred,” who demands to know how she makes eggs do their dance. He soon recruits our sixth grader, along with a handful of other dubiously magical kids, to super camp, which, upon arrival, past the fierce security, feels nothing like camp after all. And — presto! — we are caught up in a good caper. The kids realize that Camp Cadabra is actually Calabra Pharmaceuticals — a drug company that has set up magic camps to conduct research. And, really creepy, the experiments are performed on the campers. The kids use their magic to James Bond their way out of there, and in doing so they learn that being able to fog glass while counting in Spanish and to levitate a quarter of an inch while imagining buffaloes in diapers walking backward aren’t such useless powers after all.
Pogue doesn’t know his misfits as well as you might expect. Abby is an 11-year-old girl. Ben, another camper she hangs out with, is a cute boy, maybe 14. He appreciates her gift; she helps him discover his own power. By the time he brushes his floppy brown hair out of his eyes, we have figured out that she has a huge crush on him — or would, if Pogue would let her. Refusing to acknowledge the two are anything but buddies, he’s like a dad refusing to notice that his little girl is growing up, or else is working too hard to keep any funny stuff out of his book. If that’s the case, it’s a sweet impulse, but the result feels unnatural enough that it’s practically comical. Which makes it the kind of offense that, like any other in this charming book, is easy to forgive
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Susannah Meadows is a contributing editor at Newsweek. NYTRB