Sal and Gabi Break the Universe

Carlos Hernandez's Sal and Gabi Break the Universe is a funny school story for 9 year olds in which a magician's trick turns out not to be a trick.

What happens

Sal Vidón has been at his new school in Miami for three days and has been hauled in front of Principal Torres three times. The third time is the chicken.

A boy called Yasmany knocked Sal's medical bag out of his hands. It had his insulin in it, and his glucose meter, and it hit the floor with a glassy crunch. So Sal changed the game. Instead of fighting, he announced to the whole corridor that Yasmany kept a dead chicken in his locker.

There was. Sal put it there.

Then, in a tiny plastic chair in front of Principal Torres, he makes it un-happen. The blood on Yasmany's shoe is gone. The chicken the caretaker went off to mop up is not there any more. Sal says he's a magician and lets everybody believe it.

He isn't lying, exactly. He just isn't saying which bit is the trick.

Sal is wonderful company. He breaks an insult down for you line by line. He tells you when he's performing and when he means it. He has type 1 diabetes and talks about it the way you'd talk about your shoelaces, which is refreshing, and when Principal Torres apologises to him for getting something wrong he decides on the spot that she's an adult worth dealing with.

Then Gabi Reál walks in carrying her own chair, introduces herself as the bully's lawyer, shakes Sal's hand and offers to administer a lie detector test to the caretaker. She's the best thing in it.

Now the caution, and it's a real one. Sal's mum died five years ago. The thing he can do started the night he asked for her back, and it sits underneath all the jokes rather than beside them. There's also a good deal of rude humour, one word the book pointedly declines to print, and a seventh-grade cast, which over here would be year eight. A confident nine-year-old will be fine and will love the chicken. A child who takes a dead parent hard is better off waiting a while.

It's also Miami, so Spanish runs through the dialogue untranslated half the time, and Sal usually tells you what it meant afterwards.

What to read next

For another boy whose grandfather is dying and whose magic might be entirely real, try Circus Mirandus. Micah has a great-aunt made of cough syrup, a friend who doesn't believe a word of it, and a letter to a man who once promised his grandpa a miracle.