Wings of Fire 6: Moon Rising

Tui T. Sutherland's Moon Rising is the sixth Wings of Fire book, a dragon fantasy for 10 year olds about a nervous young NightWing who can hear every thought around her.

What happens

It opens in a rainforest at night. A NightWing called Secretkeeper has hidden her egg there, away from her tribe, and she sneaks out just in time to watch it hatch under two full moons.

That dragonet is Moon. She grows up mostly alone in the forest, and she turns out to have a power nobody in her tribe has had for hundreds of years. She can hear what other dragons are thinking. (Her mother calls it a curse and makes her promise to keep it hidden.)

Now Moon is four, and her mother is leaving her at Jade Mountain Academy. It's a brand-new school for young dragons from every tribe. She'd much rather stay tucked under her mother's wing.

Imagine starting school when you can hear every worry, boast and grumble in the corridor! Moon gets a headache just walking to her cave. One of her clawmates is Kinkajou, a RainWing who never stops talking (or being bright yellow). The other is a furious SkyWing who'd rather be anywhere else.

Then a calm, clear voice speaks inside her head and tells her they're destined to be friends. Moon has no idea whose it is. She's also started seeing flashes of the future, and the first one, about a quiet SeaWing called Turtle, is not a nice one.

What's lovely is being right inside Moon's head. She's anxious about nearly everything. She studies hard so she'll always know the answers, and she's desperate for one real friend. Plenty of children starting somewhere new will know exactly how that feels.

It brings in a whole new set of young dragons, but it still comes after five other books and takes a lot of what happened in them for granted. It'll make most sense read in order. The very first one is The Dragonet Prophecy, and all five earlier books are in the library.

What to read next

If they'd like another girl whose sharp ears pick up things she was never meant to hear, try Dragon Daughter. Milla is a servant hiding up an orange tree when a stranger hangs a silk bag with four padded pockets on her branch.