Ada Rue and the Banished

Kereen Getten's Ada Rue and the Banished is a magical mystery for 11 year olds about a very quiet girl who can see something nobody else in town can.

What happens

Ada doesn't say much. Everyone calls her shy, and talking to strangers makes her go shaky and blank. So leaving the city for a tiny town where she knows no one is pretty much her worst nightmare.

The town feels odd from the start. A boy on a bike across the road just stares at them. The man in the shop stares too. And before Ada knows it, Dad has signed her up for a paper round (she did try shaking her head).

At the end of her round there's a field with fog sitting in the middle of it, tall as a wall. Nobody else can see it. Ada puts her hand in, and the fog pulls her right through to the other side.

There she finds the Banished. They're magical people who used to live in the town, until the mayor used a spell to lock them away. And they want Ada to carry their letters to the families they've been cut off from.

Ada tells the story herself, and you really feel how hard it is for her to speak up. Which makes it all the better when she finds her voice on the other side of the fog. Her family is lovely too. Dad cracks silly jokes, Mum meditates on the patio, and they all play Monopoly every Saturday night.

It gets properly tense. A warning noise like a thousand drums booms over the town. There's a secret cellar under a garage, and there's talk of someone called the Crawler.

If you've got a reader who goes quiet in a crowd, they might feel very seen by Ada. And anyone who loves a hidden world just out of sight will be hooked.

What to read next

If they'd like another Kereen Getten story where a new arrival sets a whole place buzzing, try When Life Gives You Mangoes. A Caribbean village gathers at the roadside because a new girl is coming up the hill.