I read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle when I was in grade school and I’ve loved science fiction books ever since. All these years later, I was taken on a similar journey with a book about a brother and sister and their friend on an adventure to rescue a lost parent and maybe even save the world.

In Race to the Sun, Nizhoni Begay is a Navajo girl doing her best to get through seventh grade. She’s not so great at basketball. She misses her mom who disappeared when she was a toddler. She wishes she could protect Mac (her little brother) from the school bully. And, oh yeah, lately she has the power to detect monsters disguising themselves as regular people.

One of those monsters is her dad’s new boss, Mr. Charles, who need to get Nizhoni out of the way so he can fulfil his plan to release a bunch of his imprisoned monster friends and destroy the world.

Luckily for Nizhoni (and the world) she’s descended from the ancient Navajo Hero Twins, her brother can control water with his mind, her best friend is a certified genius, she knows a talking toad that who’s an expert at training monster slayers, and there are a bunch of Holy People from Navajo mythology ready to help her on her quest to save her dad from Mr. Charles and stop the monsters from escaping into the real world.

Race to the Sun is an exciting adventure in the vein of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series. Just as a A Wrinkle in Time helped me become a sci-fi fan, Race to the Sun is sending me on a search for more fantastic stories exploring Native American legends.