Hatfield, Ruth. The Book of Storms.

Hatfield, Ruth.  The Book of Storms.  Macmillan/Henry Holt  2015  357p  $16.99  ISBN 978-0-8050-9998-0  ms  Fantasy  E-BN

Eleven-year-old Danny wakes up alone after a violent storm.  He knows that his parents are storm chasers who have had a desire to control storms ever since his sister was killed  by a falling tree in a storm.  But the parents are usually home by morning.  He goes to school as usual, but is really scared when they are not home in the afternoon.  The other strange thing is that he can hear the fallen tree in his yard. He picks up a stick remaining in the fallen tree, and suddenly he can talk with animals.  As he meets others, he learns that the Book of Storms may hold the key both to what he is experiencing and to finding his parents.
  

Danny has many adventures as he follows the leads from the book.  Magic is seamlessly woven in with everyday life.  At times he has difficulty separating reality from imagination.  He meets some enemies along the way, especially Sammael.  In this, the first volume of a proposed trilogy, Danny outsmarts Sammael, but there will definitely be more encounters with him in future novels. 

Summary: Is there a way to understand storms so thoroughly as to control them?  In this fantasy, Danny searches for answers about his parents’ whereabouts and the magic in the stick he found in a storm-downed tree.           

Adventure-Fiction, Storms-Fiction                                 --Joan Theal