Gods Of Manhattan

Have you ever thought that maybe everyone famous to have ever lived in your city might live on a as a god and protector of your city in on an invisible ethereal spirit realm? No? Well neither had I, but that's exactly what this book assumes. It turns out to make for an interesting story, because it allows for such disparate elements as Dutch colonials, civil war soldiers and baseball players to all be brought together in one rollicking story. Of course there has to an outsider protagonist to introduce us to the world of Mannahatta (the invisible overlay on Manhattan where the gods live) and thirteen-year-old Rory fulfills that role in this book. Rory is just your average teenager with one exception, he's extremely observant. He always notices all the little details and he's always been able to see thru any magic trick. So when a magician at his little sisters birthday party performs a magic trick that must be real, Rory's whole world is thrown into disarray and that's when he starts seeing the magical world of Mannahatta.

This book's pacing can be slow at times and non-New Yorkers may have a hard time keeping up w/ all the history, but the interesting concept more than makes up for that. Recommend this book to fans of adventure books and historical fiction. For grades 6+