Edie and the Flits in Paris

Kate Wilkinson's Edie and the Flits in Paris is a gentle, magical adventure for 8 year olds about a girl, some very small secret friends and a school-holiday trip to France.

What happens

The flits are tiny people, most of them with wings, who live in a camp on an abandoned railway platform in north London. They build their houses out of tin cans, jam jars and lolly sticks, and bath in anchovy tins. Only children can see them. Edie is one of the few who knows they're there.

This picks up from Edie's first adventure, and her secret is getting harder to keep. Naz's little sister Sami (eight and a half, and full of questions) follows them to the camp one day and falls head over heels for Pea, the littlest flit.

Then Edie's dad gets a letter from the lost property office of the Paris Metro. They want to make a waxwork of him! He's allowed to bring Edie and a friend, and in the end Sami comes too. What nobody knows until they reach Paris is that Sami has packed Pea in a matchbox, and Impy and Nid in a sock with some boiled sweets!

What follows is a lovely tour of the Metro. There's a station like a submarine and another like a museum corridor. There are cakes that look too good to eat. And there are glimpses of something small whizzing past on wheels, which Nid is very excited about.

The best thing about it is how honest it is about Edie's feelings. She's jealous that Naz and Sami are sharing her flits. She takes an instant dislike to Fabien, the director's know-it-all grandson, and gets quite bossy and prickly. Even Impy tells her so. It's a really recognisable muddle of wanting to protect something and not wanting to share it.

There's a bittersweet thread too. The flits say children stop being able to see them once they turn thirteen, and Edie's birthday is in December. She's absolutely sure it won't happen to her (but you can tell she's worried).

If your reader loves small things, secret worlds and a bit of travel, this will be a real treat. It's also a nice one for a child who's feeling a bit left out as friendships shift.

What to read next

If you haven't started at the beginning, go back to Edie and the Box of Flits, where Edie first finds a mysterious locked wooden box left on a Tube train.