Summary: An imaginative fantasy adventure, The Call to Shakabaz sidesteps many of the usual conventions of the genre and offers instead unusual and original resolutions to a variety of sticky situations. When the recently orphaned Goodacre children are transported to the land of Faracadar, they must discover and develop their special gifts and talents, which require that they exercise ingenuity, creativity, and compassion. Fourteen-year-old Doshmisi and her younger siblings Denzel, Maia, and Sonjay are given the task of retrieving the powerful Staff of Shakabaz from the evil enchanter Sissrath. They travel through a colorful landscape with their Faracadaran guide, fifteen-year-old Jasper, and their Aunt Alice s clever, pesky, and often hilarious parrot, Bayard Rustin. The adventurers must contend with many obstacles and foes, including a giant sea serpent spewing green goo, skeeter birds with uncanny eyesight, the smelliest man in the land (named Compost), the deadly mountain geebachings (who cause their victims to laugh themselves to death), as well as Sissrath himself and his minions (who shoot deadly poison darts at their enemies). Assistance is provided to them along the way by the High Chief and his clever daughter, talking whales, ancient trees, drummers, inventors, butterflies, wolves, tigers, and the peculiar sprites who live underground in the hills. Author Amy Wachspress has set the story in an African American cultural context, with all brown characters, for a refreshingly different perspective on adventuring in make-believe lands (there are almost no books in this genre with any African American characters in them). "The Call to Shakabaz" explores a host of difficult and complex issues that today s young people face and challenges readers to reconsider the nature of violence and our relation to it. In the final climactic sequence, young readers learn the fundamental principles of nonviolence as practiced by Dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi. When the last page turns and the dust clears, this book will inspire readers to think and think again.
