Maya and the Rising Dark

 Barron, Rena.  Maya and the Rising Dark.  2020.  Houghton Mifflin Publishers, New York, New York.

Strange things are happening to 12 year old Maya:

While standing at the blackboard in class, the color bleeds from the world and then comes back.

A pack of Werehyenas attacks her in the night.  (Wait, what, Werehyenas?  Didn't they only exist in Dad's stories?)

A scary man made of darkness is chasing her through her dreams.

While her friends try to convince her that the pudding in the school cafeteria was laced with something, Maya begins to fear that there is truth to the strange stories that her father has told her through the years and that dark creatures really do stalk the Earth at night. 

When Maya discovers that her father is, in truth, Guardian of the Veil that separates the Spirit World from the Human World and has gone missing she decides to set out with the help of her two best friends to rescue her father from the Lord of Shadows.   

What I love about this book:

Maya is an African American girl, and the cast of characters in the book are racially diverse.  Maya is smart.  I especially love that the book is set on the South Side of Chicago.

This book pulls upon the folk lore of West Africa, using Orishas.  Orishas are the mediators between the human and spiritual world.  The story does an excellent job of explaining what Orishas are, and what their job is meant to be.

Teamwork is what saves the day.  While Maya wants to save her father on her own, the team works together and it is through their teamwork along with help from her father that they are able to prevail.

It is not written in the style of a Rick Riordan book.  It stands on it's own merit, and the story arc does not take the turns a Riordan book takes.  There are some genuine surprises in the plot.