The Golden Rectangle

In 'The Golden Rectangle, ' two girls battle a tiny tyrant

By Tracy Grant, February 15, 2013 (Washington Post)



When "The Golden Rectangle" begins, Lucy Moon is hiding in the barn on her father's farm in Puddleville, Georgia, while snow swirls on a 90-degree day.



Yep, you read that right. The snow has been created by crushing 40,000 pounds of ice in honor of the wedding of Lucy's sister, Nell. The wedding promises to be something never before seen in Puddleville. But Lucy wants none of it. She doesn't want her sister to get married and she certainly doesn't want to wear the fancy pink dress that her sister has picked for her.



"But life has a funny way of turning your worst day into your best, and changing the thing you hate most into your lucky charm. In the end, Lucy owed everything to that dumb pink dress."



The second chapter of the book takes place 1,000 miles from Georgia in New York City and introduces readers to 10-year-old Flor Bernoulli, who is about as different from Lucy as anyone could be. Flor loves fancy clothes, has traveled the world and is about to meet up with a long-lost half sister.



And Flor has a strange friend named Dr. Pi, who is a wizard from another galaxy.



So what happens when Dr. Pi brings Lucy and Flor together to fight a tiny tyrant made of nothing but squares and rectangles?



Well, we can't actually tell you that, but we can tell you that the results are, ahem, magical. NEIMARK, Gillian. The Golden Rectangle.

144p. S & S/Aladdin. Feb. 2013. Tr $15.99. ISBN 978-1-4169-8042-1; ebook $9.99. ISBN 978-1-4169-8527-3.



Gr 4-6-Ten-year-old cowgirl Lucy Moon couldn't be more different from fashionista Flor Bernoulli, the superstar introduced in The Secret Spiral (S & S, 2011), yet they are destined to work together to save the world from Square Man and his evil plan to destroy all curves and things round. Together with Dr. Pi, a friendly baker and wizard, and Lucy's dad, they fly through time and space to achieve their goal. Riddled with math terms and plays on words, the text can be humorous and clever, although perhaps lost on general readers. Even the title is part of a mathematical theorem. There is also a situation in the beginning of the novel that doesn't contribute to the story line and is never revisited. Recommend this book to true fantasy or math lovers; possibly it could be used as a supplemental introduction to trigonometry.-D. Maria LaRocco, Cuyahoga Public Library, Strongsville, OH