Keeper of the Lost Cities

2012’s Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger is a fantasy-adventure coming-of-age novel for advanced middle-grade readers. Brilliant young Sophie Foster discovers she’s not human but an elf with psychic powers. She must leave the human realm, study at an academy for elf prodigies, and try to understand the strange memories that haunt her and may put her life in peril.

Since the book’s publication, Messenger has released several sequels, and the series reached the New York Times bestseller list. A film adaptation is in development. Messenger also writes the young-adult series Sky Fall.

The ebook version of the 2012 edition forms the basis for this study guide.

Plot Summary

Sophie Foster is a brilliant 12-year-old high-school senior who can hear other people’s thoughts. On a trip with her class to a natural history museum in San Diego, she meets Fitz, a tall, handsome 15-year-old boy with glittery-blue eyes who also has telepathic powers. Overwhelmed to meet someone like her, Sophie runs, but he follows and tells her she’s not a human but an elf, a much superior being. He and other elves have been searching for her for years.

To prove it, he takes Sophie’s hand, aims a crystal-tipped wand at a beam of sunlight, and travels with her on the light beam across the world to a hidden city, Eternalia, lush and beautiful with jewel-like buildings, one of the lost cities of human myth.