Shelf Awareness--The Chaos Monster

MG Review: The Chaos Monster

The Chaos Monster by Sayantani DasGupta (Scholastic, 240p., ages 8-12, 9781338766738, July 18, 2023)

In the witty, fantastical The Chaos Monster, book one of Sayantani Dasgupta's Secrets of the Sky series, fraternal twins find that magic can happen to anyone, especially if they live in that "state where a lot of strange things happen"--New Jersey!

Fourth-graders Kinjal and Kiya Rajkumar seem like "regular, normal brother-sister twins" who live in a "regular, normal town," until the night they sneak into their basement to find Baba's old folktale book hidden in a locked trunk. Suddenly, "a pair of foggy gray hands coming out of a shapeless tornado-like, whirling mass" appears and grabs their pet, Thums-Up--she has been "dognapped by a chaos monster." Two flying pakkhiraj horses, Snowy and Raat, land in the twins' yard and agree to fly them to their home, the Sky Kingdom, to find Thums-Up.

The pakkhiraj, though, also need help. Bees are dying off in the Sky Kingdom, and they believe Kiya and Kinjal can fix the problem. Princess Pakkhiraj shows them how the new chief minister of a nearby kingdom is distributing dangerous pesticides with badly rhymed slogans such as "GREEN YOUR TREES AND STAY BUG FREE(S)!" As Kinjal sums it up, "he stinks at rhyming, so he's definitely up to no good." Kinjal and Kiya will have to stop the use of PEST-B-GONE or the "entire ecosystem of this dimension" will fail. At the same time, the siblings also have a personal stake in the quest: if they don't put an end to the destruction, "something frightening and unspeakable" will happen to their family. Kiya and Kinjal commence their "heroic call to adventure" accompanied by Thums-Up, Snowy, and Raat. Along the way, their burgeoning magical abilities suggest the twins are not as "ordinary" as they think.

Sayantani Dasgupta (Debating Darcy; The Serpent's Secret) has penned an imaginative tale in which creatures from traditional Bengali folktales and children's stories spring to life, and magic is a treasure "buried deep inside each of us." Her twins, wonderfully adept at humorous banter in the face of danger, grow from bickering siblings into heroes who make a difference. Sandra Tang's grayscale spot and full-page illustrations add a layer of storytelling and break up blocks of text, making the book more approachable for young readers. As literary-minded Kinjal learns to face his fears, and science-minded Kiya figures out that sometimes her instincts are as important as facts, readers should be held captive by their out-of-this-world adventures. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author.

Shelf Talker: In this imaginative series opener filled with creatures from Bengali folktales and children's stories, a pair of "normal" twins must save a fantastical realm by figuring out what is killing its bees.