Race to the Sun

Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse is a fast, funny monster hunt for 9 year olds about a girl whose odd talent finally turns out to be worth something.

What happens

Nizhoni Begay can spot monsters. They mostly look like people. The one sitting a few rows up at her school basketball match is a pale man in a black suit with very red lips, and there is a ring of empty seats round him because nobody can say quite why they would rather sit elsewhere.

Nizhoni is Navajo and she goes to an intertribal charter school where every student is Native, which she was sure would fix her whole life. It has not. She is still not popular. Her best and only friend Davery is the one who notices when she goes quiet.

She is a very funny narrator. She interrupts herself, corrects herself, and tells you with total confidence that monsters like eyeballs as party food before admitting she read that somewhere and has only been sensing monsters for a few months.

Her one attempt at glory goes badly. She volunteers for the last shot of the game, spots the man in the suit staring at her with red eyes, turns the wrong way and takes the ball full in the face.

Nobody picks her up afterwards. Her dad does not answer the phone. He never does.

Then the man in the suit turns out to be someone her father answers to. He has just taken over the place where her dad works, drilling for oil and gas, and he is far too curious about Nizhoni, about her little brother Mac, and about where their family comes from. A day later her dad is gone, and the note he leaves behind says Run.

What makes this one work is how lightly the sad parts are handled. Her mum has been gone since she was a toddler, and all she has left is a turquoise pendant she tapes under her shirt because she is not allowed to wear it on court. Nizhoni mentions it in passing and gets on with things, which lands far better than a big scene would.

Nothing in the opening is frightening beyond a nosebleed and a creepy man in the crowd. But the whole story is built on a missing parent, and that may sit close to home for some children.

What to read next

For another kid pulled into their own family's oldest stories, you will find Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky here too. Fair warning, it starts somewhere sadder, with a boy carrying the journal of a best friend he has lost.