With every detention and expulsion and with every scorch mark and emotionally scarred staff member, the legend of twelve-year-old Lavina Lucas continues to grow. Mostly abandoned by her parents who often travel for their work, Vin has not received guidance on how to use and control her magic, and she yearns to figure it out. After all, the Treaty of 1695 does say that “magic must be controlled” (4), and the purpose of magecraft education is to teach discipline, restraint, and control. Because of her infractions, Vin’s latest emotional outburst at Strictland School of Magic has landed her into the last resort for delinquents.
Such is the plot of Nicki Pau Preto’s debut middle grade novel, The Last Hope School for Magical Delinquents, the first book in a duology. Here, Vin meets Gilly Reid, a Water Conjurer, as well as siblings Theo and Araminta Singh. Determined not to make any friends, since she’s certain she will not be staying long, Vin resists their overtures at friendship. Theo is a Conjurer, specializing in objects. However, he doesn’t summon them; he replicates them. Araminta is a Caster who performs illusions. Vin is unsure of her specialization, and just hopes her magic can be meek and malleable so she doesn’t fail in this last attempt at belonging. It is with this hope and a wish to know, master, and use her magic that Vin begins training under Headmistress Ava Hope. But the headmistress has a dark past with her own secrets.
In addition to sharing details about the classes of magic and to forming a connection between imagination and magic, Preto’s novel underscores the importance of mentors and support systems in the healthy development of self-esteem. She also throws in a few skirmishes and a battle to remind readers that life—whether lived as magic or mundane—comes with its share of conflicts.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of the novel addresses identity and how magic is not “like a hat or a haircut” (195) but is intrinsic to one’s identity. Describing magic as something that is worked for, Preto creates an analogy, suggesting that our talents and abilities as “meant to be shared” (195). When we separate someone from their actions, when we see someone as an individual rather than as a misfit or a delinquent, we begin to recognize their power, uniqueness, and beauty. “That is the only way to make real change. To value each and every student that walks through these doors, to see them not as their power—wild and potentially unsafe—but as themselves. As worthy, even of risk” (277).
- Donna