Magic, Mazes, and Math

A Review of Ari Goelman’s The Path of Names (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2013)

By Derek Newman-Stille

Despite wanting to go to math camp and magic camp, Dahlia is convinced by her parents to attend Jewish camp. It comes complete with everything she would expect – sports, crafts, outdoor activities, friends, Hebrew lessons, and mean girls… and a few things she doesn’t expect – dreams from another person’s memory, sudden knowledge she didn’t possess before, kabbalistic magic, possession, conspiracies, and dead girls. Jewish camp ends up combining the best and worst of math and magic camp with real supernatural events and important magical numbers from kabbalistic literature.

In Ari Goelman’s The Path of Names, Dahlia’s diseffected boredom turns into desperate battle she learns that she needs to solve mysteries both magican and murdrous in order to save her fellow campers. She just wants to be normal, like other kids her age, but she is an outsider not just because she is clever and has an interest in math and magic, but because the magical has an interest in her and the numbers are not in her favour.

Dahlia has to prevent secrets of Judaism from once again being stolen from the Jewish people and used for personal gain.

To read more about Ari Goelman, you can visit his website at http://arigoelman.com/ . To read more about The Path of Names and other Arthur A. Levine Books, you can visit their website at http://www.arthuralevinebooks.com/ .