Book Review of Accidental Tribes
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The Children’s Book Review
Accidental Tribes
Written by C.S. Pascoal
Ages: 13+ | 202 Pages
Publisher: Prospera Books (2026) | ISBN: 979-8-9958298-1-2
What to Expect: Friendship, school culture, technology, mystery, cyberbullying, identity and belonging.
Told through eight tangled perspectives, Accidental Tribes follows a group of teens who are not just solving a mystery—they’re also learning to see themselves and each other in a new light.
At Mariah Wilson Public School, eight barely tolerated students—hackers, outcasts, and troublemakers—are dumped into a forgotten classroom nicknamed Solitaria after a week that torched the school’s grade system, its reputation, and half its social order. Overseen by the school’s advisor, Dr. Miryam, and shadowed by the Director (a platinum-haired administrator whose silence is scarier than any threat), their thirty-day sentence is discipline dressed up as intervention. But the Unlucky 8 stumble onto something bigger than their own trouble: an unexplained death, missing funds, and a school culture built on silence. As they reluctantly work together for both answers and survival, alliances that started as convenience turn into something closer to friendship—even if that friendship is far from uncomplicated.
The characters provide an unlikely but engaging cast for readers to get to know, from Jamie’s relief and guilt over her former best friend’s illness to the Director’s eerie, heel-clicking authority. The underfunded NYC public school setting grounds the mystery in current educational tensions and realities, making it unsettlingly plausible for readers who live in these settings and haunting for those who don’t. Loose, expressive ink illustrations punctuate the text and evoke both energy and mystery, supporting a whodunit plot that races along with genuine momentum. Dark humor sits alongside more serious notes, with the all-too-real digital-age pressures of cyberbullying forming a core part of the mystery.
Fast-paced, compelling, and sharply relevant, Accidental Tribes blends mystery, dark humor, and the realities of growing up in the digital age.
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About the Author
Candice S. Pascoal (pen name C.S. Pascoal) is an award-winning Tech for Good innovator and best-selling author who leads social impact ventures from New York City, where she raises her son and serves on the board of the United Nations International School. She founded UnBoxMe, a global community of philosophers, researchers, innovators, and authors confronting the questions technology alone cannot answer. Her ventures also include Alfredus Creatives and Kickante, the crowdfunding platform that earned her the 2017 Cartier Women’s Initiative Award.
Candice is an international speaker whose work has reshaped how millions engage with entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and purpose. Her career began early and moved fast: she entered the tech industry at 16, apprenticed in New York under a multiple-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee at 19, and led the international expansion of American companies by 23. An American with Italian and Brazilian roots, she is a polyglot whose multicultural life shapes everything she builds; her work in business for good spans five continents and 90 countries.
For more information, visit accidentaltribes.com.
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