The Keepers: The Box and the Dragonfly by Ted Sanders, illustrated by Iacopo Bruno, 544 pp, RL 5
It's not often that I read (or listen to) a book that is more than 400 pages. In fact, it has been two years since I last did both - Wildwood by Colin Meloy, 560 pages, which I read, and Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman, 512 pages, which I listened to. At 544 pages, The Keepers: The Box and the Dragonfly written by Ted Sanders and illustrated by Iacopo Bruno was a challenge for me, but well worth the effort, especially since it reminded me what a gifted writer can do with that many pages.

Set in Chicago, twelve-year-old Horace is taking the bus home from school one day when something strange catches his eye - a storefront sign that reads HORACE F. ANDREWS. Stunned and disbelieving, Horace gets off before his stop and tries to make his way to the store, but is distracted by an impossibly tall man who is skeletally thin. Eventually Horace finds his way to the strange store where he must sign a guest book and make his way through a corridor that is wall-to-wall birdcages and return a second time before he makes a find in one of the many, curiously labeled bins filled with artifacts that fill the warehouse that is known as the House of Answers (not the Horace F. Andrews store.)
What Horace finds is the box as seen on the cover and he spends another 50 or so pages figuring out what the box - which he has been told not to keep anything in - does. What he discovers is both exciting and a little mundane - anything put into the box disappears, reappearing exactly 24 hours later in the same spot. And, if Horace looks through it, he can see 24 hours into the future, mostly. Horace meets Chloe, a girl with a similar item from the House of Answers, a dragonfly necklace that allows her to "go thin" and pass through walls. Together, they dodge the tall, thin man, Dr. Jericho, and return to the House of Answers to get answers.

The UK edition of The Keepers: The Box and the Dragonfly, with cover art by my favorite, Chris Riddell!
Source: Review Copy