The arts make more than their usual kind of magic in this dystopian fantasy. Reluctantly leaving his loving parents and tight-knit community for Peerless Academy, an exclusive boarding school, Keynan finds that all is not as it seems as halls weirdly change shape, power failures and lockdowns are frequent, and the teachers are irritable and secretive. He's amazed to learn that a wizard's war long ago left his world a quilt of altered realities, with the academy engaged in a quixotic effort to knit everything back together. The key to magic working lies in using art, music, poetry, and dance together, and it is Keynan's genuinely hard-fought, sometimes disastrous efforts to hone his lackluster hip-hop lyrics, with help from a newly met team of variously gifted classmates, that drive this tumultuous tale. Readers will cheer him along his artistic journey, which reaches a climactic breakthrough courtesy of a frenemy's unexpected talent for beatboxing. But Sanders saves a devastating twist for the end that punctures his budding freestyler's triumph and absolutely demands at least one sequel.

What's the point of having a crew? Having folks who tough it out with you.Twelve-year-old poet Keynan "Keymaster" Masters is content with his neighborhood, life with his mom and baba, and attending virtual school. When he gets a surprise acceptance letter from the Peerless Academy of Movement, Art, Genealogy, Instrumentation, and Composition, he's resolute about not attending, because it would mean leaving Bizzy Block, his tight-knit co-op community. Full of family, food, and fun, Bizzy Block is safe-well, except for the raging storms that seem to come from nowhere and threaten to swallow everything up. After a particularly destructive storm roars through, Keymaster decides to go to Peerless after all, hoping they'll have the knowledge to help him stop the storms. But Peerless holds more secrets than that, among them the fact that there is broken magic out there that must be held at bay lest it destroy everything. Magic is hard to contain, however, and Keymaster inadvertently rhymes up trouble. He and his creative crew-artist Amari and dancer Leah-face the biggest threat they've ever seen. Collectively, their artistic talents keep Peerless safe, but there's more trouble in store, as Keymaster learns when he returns home for the summer. Sanders' debut is a culturally and linguistically rich journey through a magical world populated by young Black creatives, featuring diverse portrayals of Black youth. The fast pace will keep readers absorbed.This magical, action-packed journey is layered with challenges and enriched by friendship. (Fantasy. 9-13)

Sanders offers an energetic fantasy adventure teeming with memorable characters and mysteries in this thought-provoking debut. Nobody knows why mercurial and devastating storms have been plaguing Earth, prompting anxiety across the globe. And while 12-year-old Keynan Masters would rather focus on perfecting his rhymes and communing with his neighbors, he’s also preoccupied with soothing his mother’s fears about the weather. When Keynan is accepted into the Peerless Academy, a prestigious school for the arts, he’s reluctant to leave home, and only agrees to attend after learning that the school’s elite science programs might determine how to eliminate the storms. But nothing about Peerless is as Keynan expects; underneath the inexplicably boring classes hide unusual and fantastical secrets involving covert passageways, reality rifts, and an ancient, corrupt magic that only he and his classmates can contain. Using his newfound powers, which he conjures through his rhymes, Keynan is determined to uncover the truth behind Peerless and the storms. Occasionally ambiguous worldbuilding sometimes causes confusion; nevertheless, Keynan’s talent for spoken-word performance proffers strong messaging about the power of the arts, making for an ambitious, postapocalyptic-feeling tale. Most characters read as Black. Ages 8–12. Agent: Mary C. Moore, Kimberly Cameron & Assoc. (Oct.)