Andrea Beaty.  Cicada Summer.  Amulet Books, 2008.  167 pages.  Age 9 to 12.

I don’t use the word “compelling” lightly.  Well, I do use it sarcastically all the time, come to think of it.  There’s a title in the Publishers Weekly Spring Children’s Listings that’s described as “a portrait of friendship and competition between to boys.”  I’d snarkily call that compelling (though the benefit of the doubt should be granted, as an adequate one-sentence description of a book is rare).  Or I might say a Daisy Meadows [Stupid Theme] Fairies title sounds like a compelling read.

But if I use the word seriously, take note—and I’d easily say I found Cicada Summer to be compelling from the first chapter.  Lily, our narrator, doesn’t speak.  She wants to be invisible.  There was a traumatic event in her recent past, something to do with her brother.  Whatever it was, they must have been involved with something that could have caused brain damage, because the rest of the world thinks Lily is incapable of speech and unable to read, or do much beyond pushing a broom around Fern’s General Store.  But Lily’s invisibility is suddenly at risk when troublemaker Tinny comes to town and starts shaking things up.

[Apologies if parts of that last sentence read like I was trying to write a book jacket summary.  I’m working on being concise.]

The what-happened-to-Lily-and-Pete mystery is told via italicized flashback, while a second, surface-level mystery about Tinny’s sketchy backstory unfolds in the present.  Lily is a Nancy Drew fan, and I briefly wonder if it’s for the same reason I was—small town library, limited choices.  Regardless, she begins by approaching the Tinny mystery Nancy-style.  Cicada Summer’s surface plot is not a cookie cutter mystery, though, and Lily is okay with that.  Of the not-so-tidy ending, she says, “Even though Nancy Drew wouldn’t approve, I’m glad.”

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