This book has a good underlying theme and concept but it felt like it got off course.
The bullying felt very severe and the characters seemed to be lacking something.
I love the cover but i think the story still needs some work.

While I loved the idea of this book the way it evolved was disjointed and sometimes hard to follow. Also, I don't think it is the strongest writing or exploration of bullying as a theme.

There’s no doubt KA/Kristen Halbrook is a gifted writer; she creates beautiful imagery (Sasha recalls a family picnic on “a June day bursting with warmth”) and a unique but embraceable community of Cirque characters. It’s the mix of genres (fantasy and realistic fiction) that sets this book off-course. It's a recognized trope that there has to be a crisis of some kind to set two lone children off on a quest to save their community and their parents. But if that quest is rooted in realistic fiction, those elements of the story need to be realistic, and too many aren’t in this novel to be able to ignore them.

Sasha and Toddy have been homeschooled – in a CIRCUS, for heaven's sake- so there’s a major disconnect when their parents send them off to public school for the first time with little engagement with what their children are actually experiencing. Sasha’s mother says she talks to Sasha’s teacher and that “my girl is doing well” but Sasha’s teacher says “your mother never listens to what I tell her”. Mrs. Flint may be an aptly named, evil caricature but readers tend to believe her since Sasha’s mother blithely (naively?) sends selectively verbal 2nd grader Toddy off to public school for the first time, placing the responsibility of his well-being on his 5th grade sister, also starting school for the first time. Mother piles on the burden, adding “you have to be an extra special big sister at school”. Even the Cirque community leaves Sasha and Toddy on their own after their parents disappear. They knock on the kids’ door, talk to Sasha through the door but obey her request to go away: it’s Toddy's teacher aide who notices Sasha is gaunt and starving. She is the only adult character in the book who does anything to actually help the children. But again, a crisis had to be plotted for the fantasy quest to take place and Sasha to realize her self-worth.

The bullying Sasha and Toddy endure is so severe (in this realistic fiction portion of the novel) it calls for more of a resolution than is provided: Kirk still sits in the chair behind Sasha at the novel’s end – Could the school not even move his seat? He physically assaulted her multiple times! Middle grade readers would know this is nonsensical - but it’s okay, as this book’s message for kids in this situation is to hide it from your parents, lie when they ask how you’re doing, suffer in silence and finally envision yourself a mirror and reflect all the goodness that’s in your heart. This advice belongs to the fantasy part of the novel.

It’s not violent enough for Halbrook to see Sasha and Toddy tormented, she has to have the evil kids torture a kitten (cliché alert), blinding it in one eye. Halbrook fumbles the details of this character, as Pirate is introduced (and illustrated at the top of Chapters 9 and 15) as having only one eye. Yet his eyes come back on page 165 “Pirate hid under their knees, his eyes glowing through the gap.”
P 202 “Pirate huddled in Toddy’s arms, his eyes as round as full moons.”

until page 207 when he’s back to one eye again “even the same eyes: one open, one forever closed”. How did such obvious errors get this far? Where are Halbrook’s editors?

It’s an ambitious, well written mashup of fantasy and realistic fiction that does not jell. If violent bullying is used as a plot device, it is a grave topic and needs to be handled responsibly. This novel does not do that. What a shame.