The Search for Shenaril

by Jane Nakatani

 

The Search for Shenaril is a novel for people nine years old and beyond. It is about a girl and a boy from a warring culture, each with a different kind of troubled childhood. With the help of Ahn, a mystical cat who has many more than nine lives and is able to give them away, the children come to show love and compassion in difficult, even harrowing circumstances.

The two ten-year-olds, little moon and Obin, meet for the first time in the wilderness where they have been abandoned by their elders. They clash verbally and physically at first but slowly, through some challenging adventures and with Ahn’s magical, mystical assists, they come to realize that they have a great deal in common.

“You are me and I am you,” Obin finally says to little moon. “Together we are strong. Together we can face whatever comes.”

 

 

Praise for the book:

 

A scarred, abandoned, and dying girl is given another life by an evolved cat. A 10-year-old boy raised in a militaristic society is cast out and left for dead because he faints.These three unlikely protagonists engage our attention from the moment we meet them. Their quest to rescue the girl’s beloved slave-mother and to find the lost remnant of the compassionate Shen people takes us on a remarkable and revelatory adventure. Jane Nakatani’s gifted writing flows forward in lyrical cadences with the sparseness and depth of poetry. Profound social themes and penetrating psychological insights are subtly woven within her narrative. This short novel’s touch of fantasy and child (and cat!) protagonists will quickly draw in and fascinate younger readers and teens. Yet adult readers as well will find themselves engaged and enriched as chapter by chapter, layer by layer, the themes slowly surface into their conscious minds and leave them pondering truths both painful and heartwarming.

 

— Dennis R. Hoerner, PhD, retired English professor and high school administrator.

 

——

 

This book is a delight to read.  It's good fun if you're interested in alternate worlds dripping with a little magic and mystery, or unique, interconnected characters with complex back stories.  But it's more than good fun.  This tender story contains profound depths.  Readers can come close to something powerful.  Like an iceberg, there is something palpable underneath.  Readers might wonder:  What does it mean to speak in both a slave language and a master language?  Who might be just like me underneath?  Who (and what) is here, ready to offer life?

 

— Liz Bruno, MA in English, MA in religion, essayist, poet and author of Licorice