Anytikkun readers delighted by Harry Potter will enjoy picking up this book. If you have ever idly wished someone would conjure up a tale for kids that would impart a Potter-esque magical glow to progressive politics and Jewish culture, and maybe even New York, then take note. This book succeeds at two out of those three.
Adult sci-fi author Chris Moriarty has given us a cross between Potter and E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime. In her early 1900s New York City, Sacha, a thirteen-year-old Jewish immigrant boy, has to battle magical forces wielded by robber barons. Can his grandfather, the rabbi from the old country and an expert on everything kabbalistic, including dybbuks, help? Will his unwelcome sidekick, Lily, daughter of the über-wealthy high-society Astral family, be of any use? Why has Inspector Wolf, a mysterious NYPD Inquisitor, hired him and Lily as apprentices in...
