THE TIME OF GREEN MAGIC

A mysterious house reveals startling secrets.

Eleven-year-old Abigail is less than pleased: Her beloved Granny Grace has returned to Jamaica and her widowed father, Theo, has combined households with his new wife, Polly, and her boys, Max, 13, and Louis, 6. After moving into an ivy-covered North London house that they can—with belt-tightening—just afford, the normal upheaval of blended-family life takes an otherworldly turn. Abi emerges from reading The Kon-Tiki Expedition to find the book damp and salty. There’s a flash of green wing—a parrot’s?—and a mysterious tropical seashell. It’s wondrous if unnerving, but Iffen is another order of magic entirely. Plaintive Louis, who loves Abi persistently and unreservedly, welcomes through his ivy-framed bedroom window a feline friend he dubs Iffen. But Iffen grows to potentially deadly proportions—while Polly temporarily works overseas, Theo picks up additional nursing shifts, ill-tempered Max simultaneously navigates an unrequited crush on the French babysitter and a cold war with his former best friend, and Abi retreats into her books. The quest to rescue Louis from Iffen ultimately saves them all. Readers will find the banter, humor, warmth, and cheerful chaos of the family’s lives irresistible. Avid bookworms and die-hard book resisters alike will find sympathetic mirrors, and the latter may well be won over to reading. Abi, her dad, and grandmother are cued as black; all other characters are white.

Overflowing with heart and magic.