Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans

Isi Hendrix's Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans is a fantasy adventure for 10 year olds about a girl who has been told all her life that she's cursed.

What happens

Adia is twelve and an orphan. She lives with Aunt Ife and Uncle Eric in the Swamplands, and they don't want her there. Her uncle hates her reading. Her cousin steals her lunch. Missionaries have told the whole village to give up the old gods, and they hand out a tonic called Drops that makes people calm and obedient and a bit dull behind the eyes.

Adia wants out. She's secretly got herself a placement as a kitchen apprentice at the Academy of Shamans, right across the sea. Her aunt is horrified (shamans are demons, apparently).

Then everything goes wrong. Adia gets so angry she starts to glow purple. The roots of every plant in the village tear out of the ground and houses come crashing down. Her uncle is sure she's an ogbanje, the kind of spirit child who brings misery on a family. And Adia is scared he's right.

So she runs, with a half-feral cat called Bubbles under her arm. The Academy turns out to be falling apart, literally. Boards fly off the walls and escape into the forest! There's a fierce teenage head chef, a chatty boy who wants to be a soldier, and hardly a real Zarian shaman left in the place.

Adia is great company. She's clever and stubborn and always quoting her atlas at people. Who else would point out, in the middle of a hymn, that it has never once snowed in the Swamplands? She's funny even when things are awful.

It has a lot to say about who gets to tell a country what to believe, and who gets treated as worth less. It's woven right into the story, so it never feels like a lecture.

Something to know before starting. There's real sadness here, all of it backstory. Adia's cousin EJ, her best friend, died last year while she was reading nearby, and she blames herself. Her aunt once told the children about soldiers cutting off a boy's arm for stealing a plantain. Her uncle is frightening. A child who finds cruel grown-ups upsetting may struggle with the early chapters. A child who loves a hero who fights back will be cheering her on.

What to read next

If they're after another girl whose power flares up when she's upset, try Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun. Onyeka's hair is wild and enormous, and her mum's number one rule is never, ever lose control.