![]() ![]() Despite her frustration and disappointment, Amelia keeps it to herself and goes with her mother to Porthaven to comfort Gran, look for Grandad and help run the pub. He takes an interest in Amelia's world, asking her if she's seen anything good on YouTube, even though she's sure he has no idea what it is. Amelia's Gran thinks that "broadband" is a wide piece of elastic, but her Grandad is different. No satellite TV" and barely any regular TV due to poor reception. Porthaven exists in a pocket from the past, with no "cell-phone signal. Amelia's Gran and Grandad are both from the tiny town of Porthaven where they run the only pub, a pub that was owned by Gran's father. Plans change drastically when her beloved Grandfather disappears. Eighth grader Amelia, who secretly still nurtures her childhood love of animals, is excited for the start of Spring Break, looking forward to going to movies, hanging out at the mall and reading about celebrities in trashy magazines with her friends. Kessler weaves the same kind of magic into North of Nowhere, playing with time and putting a normal kid in the center of a desperate situation that she has to first figure out, then figure out how to fix. As the main character in A Year without Autumn, Jenni may not seem like typical protagonist, but in the challenges she faces when she takes a rickety old elevator that puts her a year and a day in the future, the brains she uses to figure out what's going on and the efforts she has to make to get her life and the lives of her family and her best friend Autumn's family from derailing are gripping and, despite the fantasy aspect, feel real - like how a real twelve year old would realistically be able to handle this kind of unrealistic situation. By that I mean that she creates rounded characters with a depth of details, like the quiet, order-loving, responsible Jenni Green, who face hurdles that are the result of wrinkles, glitches or warps (as in Eoin Colfer's superb new W.A.R.P series) in time. But, until I get to them, I am thoroughly enjoying everything else that Liz Kessler writes! Based on A Year without Autumn and North of Nowhere, I'd say that Kessler has a distinct gift for writing fantasy that is squarely grounded in the real world. Believe me, these books are on my to-be-read pile. This is despite the fact that, when I was a bookseller, I watched hugely successful series, Emily Windsnap, about a girl who accidentally learns she is a mermaid during a swimming lesson, and her Philippa Fisher Trilogy about an ordinary girl who discovers that the new girl at school, Daisy, is actually her fairy godmother - or godsister, since they are the same age, fly off the shelves. Ages 8-12.I am embarrassed to say that the only books by Liz Kessler that I have read are her stand alones, like A Year without Autumnand here newest book, North of Nowhere. The jewel-toned jacket art and ink-wash illustrations sprinkled throughout add girlish charm to an imaginative story. Coincidences drive the plot Shona has recently studied illegal mermaid-human marriages in school a creepy lightkeeper drops a key that unlocks a treasure chest containing a file spelling out the entire backstory. Newcomer Kessler anchors her fantasy in the nitty-gritty of adolescence: Emily bests a bully who comes close to guessing her secret, and she finds a best friend in Shona, a mermaid she meets during her nightly swims. At night, she sneaks from the boat where she lives with her mother to explore the undersea world, and unravel the mystery of her genetics which involves her long-missing, never-discussed father. ![]() She hops out of the water before she can be branded a freak, but she's hooked. Before Emily's first kick turn she feels her legs melding into a tail. Despite never having had a lesson, she takes to the water like, well, a fish. Pre-teen girls will likely bite at this novel's tempting bait, offered in the opening lines: "Can you keep a secret? Everybody has secrets, of course, but mine's different." Emily Windsnap, who narrates, is half-mermaid, as she discovers, inconveniently, in her seventh-grade swim class. ![]()
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