The Queen of Ocean Parkway

Gr 4-6–An engaging time travel story disguised as a mystery. Eleven-year-old Roya Alborzi dreams of being a news reporter one day. Until then, she spends her time helping her mom, who is the superintendent of their historic Brooklyn apartment building, and hosting her own podcast about the tenants. Roya has to put her investigative skills to the test when Katya Petrov, one of her favorite tenants, disappears after visiting a legendary fortune-telling machine at Coney Island. Together with her new neighbor, Amin, and Katya’s wife, Stephanie, Roya must break the Petrov family curse before Katya is gone forever. Roya is a bright and charismatic protagonist. Her relationships with the story’s diverse secondary characters are multifaceted and add a level of complexity to an otherwise straightforward mystery. Roya’s budding friendship with Amin is a delight to read; her relationship with her father, who is undergoing chemotherapy, is beautifully written. Roya’s interactions with her father and fears about his health may resonate with readers who have immunocompromised family or friends. The characters’ physical descriptions are simple and mostly describe hair and eye color. The author relies on language and cultural markers to denote ethnicity.