Sabrena Swept Away
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
JLG Gold Standard Selection
This lush reimagining of the classic characters from The One Thousand and One Nights is for fans of The Last Mapmaker, Mañanaland, and Graciela in the Abyss. Sabrena’s family has always claimed they are descended from the legendary sailor Sinbad. But when the sea calls Sabrena to a whole new world, she’ll have to fight for her own story.
Sabrena’s destiny—her qadr—is strong. Or so her family has always said. After all, according to her dad, they are the descendants of the legendary Sinbad the sailor, who sailed the seven seas in The One Thousand and One Nights. But Sabrena has felt anything but strong lately. Mostly, she has felt worried. Worried about being the new girl in a school everyone else has attended since kindergarten, worried about Grandma’s memory failing and her stories getting more outlandish, worried about Mom deciding that Grandma can’t even live at home anymore. Worried about the strange—almost fantastical—things that keep happening whenever she’s around water.
And then, one day, the sea’s call will not be denied. It floods into her life and sweeps her away, to be fished out of an ocean both strange and oddly familiar. It only takes her a moment to realize that she’s in the stories spun by the legendary queen Scheherazade. Yet no one has ever heard of Sinbad, nothing seems to be going quite as it does in the tales as she knows them, and a frightening jinn is terrorizing the kingdom. Can Sabrena find the courage to claim her destiny before it’s too late?
Retelling of Arabian Nights: Sabrena is swept into the world of Scheherazade’s tales, but it’s a version where no one has ever heard of her legendary ancestor, Sinbad, and a terrifying jinn runs rampant.Magic and Friendship: To survive, Sabrena must team up with new friends—the scrappy niece of Ali Baba and a lost prince—and learn to control her own strange, magical connection to the sea.Stories about Grandparents: A heartfelt story about a girl’s powerful bond with her grandmother, whose fading memory and fantastical stories may hold the key to Sabrena's own destiny.Coming of Age Adventure: Pulled from her worries about being the new kid at school, Sabrena must find the courage to become the hero of her own story and fight for a world that needs her.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Riazi (A Bit of Earth) draws inspiration from The Thousand and One Nights to conjure a magical swashbuckling adventure. Tween Sabrena Bhuiyan longs to be a gifted storyteller like her grandmother, who—despite cognitive decline brought about by dementia—spins a yarn about their family's purported connection to the infamous sailor Sinbad with such prowess that Sabrena believes she can feel the drops of saltwater Grandma describes in her tales. Envious of this power, Sabrena is nonetheless uneasy when her own stories begin to conjure phantom drips and leaks within her home. This unnerving phenomenon grows worse and, during school at her Islamic academy, she finds herself swallowed by seawater and transported to another reality. As Sabrena traipses through this mystical world, she reckons with accusations of being a jinn, befriends Ali Baba's prickly adopted daughter Marjana, and sinks to the bottom of a sentient sea to discover a cursed kingdom. It is in this dreamlike realm that the story finds its footing, propelling both the reader and the protagonist through a survey of mythological tales and creatures, which Riazi renders using sensorial prose. Throughout her adventures, Sabrena discovers new perspectives through which to view her worries about her grandmother's health and her struggles with belonging at school. Ages 8–12.
