Over the Moon

 

Over the Moon
By Natalie Lloyd
Scholastic Press, 2019. 291 p.

Mallie and her family live in Cole Top, a town where all the pour people end up sending boys to the mines and girls to become servants to the rich people at age 12. Mallie doesn’t want her younger brother to be forced to work in the mines, so she dresses up as a boy and goes to try to train a flying horse to go and collect gold dust for Mortimer Good—the undisputed leader and richest man in Cole Top. However, Mallie soon finds out that battling monsters on her flying mount is the least dangerous part about what she learns.

Lloyd has created yet another great magical realism world with a spunky heroine that only wants what is best for her family. And Mallie isn’t the only character that readers will fall in love with. Denver (Mallie’s little brother) and Adam (Mallie’s good friend that also flies on adventures with her) are also characters that readers will want to get to know some more. Plus, there is the setting—Cole Top itself, the great clouds of dust that change emotions, or the political/class systems that make the poor get poorer and the rich get richer are all things that Mallie is trying to make sense of—and often finding that there is more than what meets the eye. All-in-all this is another great dip into a world that seems ordinary at first, but is full of magic and possibilities when the right adventurer decides to do something “over the moon” in order to save her family. Well done Lloyd. Well done.