In the nuanced and insightful middle-grade The Empty Place by Olivia A. Cole (Where the Lockwood Grows), a reserved girl ventures into a world for the lost after her renowned explorer father's disappearance.
One year after her father vanished in the forest, 12-year-old Henry Lightfoot watches him walk out, unhurt yet somehow different. Henry, an "indoor girl" armed with little else but questions ("Where was he? And why did he stay so long?"), walks "where her father walked." She is transported to This Place, a land to which anyone from around the world may be transported if they're feeling lost. That her dad felt astray contradicts his YouTube famous intrepid explorer persona, vexing Henry ("What if her father just wanted to leave them?"). And confusingly, This Place has recently undergone mysterious changes: a missing moon, stopped ocean tides, attacking beasts. Henry, while helping her newfound friends preserve This Place, endeavors to become the adventurous daughter she believes her father wants, but the details she uncovers about his time in This Place make her feel more lost than ever.
Cole skillfully develops a protagonist who grapples with ambivalence for a father she missed but whose obsession with fame left her feeling unseen. The author also smartly includes the idea of leaving land unchanged, a practice Henry wishes her dad would honor. The portal world stuns: it is a place out of time with two suns, horses and tigers who walk together, and a united, tight-knit community of diverse lost folks. The worldbuilding and fulfilling friendships are the backbone of this pensive yet commanding third-person narrative of discovery--of the land, of respect for others, and of self-worth. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer