Lovely Dark and Deep

Gr 6 Up–Faith is a rising senior at Ellery West, a school for magic. She is from a non-magical family and is an immigrant to the U.S., challenges compounded by being “Red Striped” (labeled as dangerous and isolated from most other students and forced to wear a uniform marked with a red stripe) after she witnessed a fellow student disappear into the forbidden forest. With the newly found family of fellow Red Stripe students, Faith must navigate the school year to graduate without being kicked out and having her magic repressed. Along the way, she and her new friends uncover a cruel colonialist crime at the school’s origin. This book is infused with the real-world immigrant experience of the author, who was born and raised in the Philippines, educated in the U.S., and is currently living and working in Germany. The Red Stripe students include characters of various ethnicities, neurodiversities, sexual orientations, and gender identities; these characteristics are relevant to the plot of the book, as at times it is questioned whether a student’s background and characteristics influence their treatment by the school.