Autumn Eternal

Kyle Bagsby's Autumn Eternal is a quirky, cosy fantasy for 9 year olds about a boy whose drawings start coming to life.

What happens

Kip Carringer lives above his aunt and uncle's general store in Arno, a small town tucked inside a huge forest. It's always autumn there. And the birds moo. (Yes, moo. Like cows.)

Nobody else in town thinks this is odd. Kip does. Marleigh, his best friend, thinks he's the odd one.

Then Kip spots smoke rising from the woods by the river, where nobody lives. The town used to have a witch, so of course he and Marleigh go to look. Inside the empty cottage Kip finds an old book full of ink blots and blank pages. He decides it'll make a nice sketchbook.

The next morning, the creature he drew in it is stealing a pie off a windowsill.

Squablins are part squirrel, part goblin, but mostly goblin. Watching two of them steer a runaway pumpkin cart into a vegetable stall is very silly indeed (one of them definitely sticks its tongue out).

It reads a bit like a daydream that's gone slightly wrong. Kip gets picked on at school by Gary Turner. The whole town still remembers the year he played a cornstalk in the school play and wet himself on stage, aged six. So when he writes that he's the hero of Arno and wakes up in a full suit of armour, nobody's impressed. They just laugh.

Marleigh is the best bit. She teases him all the time, calls him "Kip Carringer" in full, and she's always the one who knocks on the scary door first.

There are a couple of darker notes. The witch is found sitting in her chair as a skeleton, which feels more sad than frightening. Something shadowy is watching Kip from the fog. Kip's parents aren't around (there was an accident when he was a baby), and Marleigh has lost her mum, though both are mentioned only briefly. It's American too, with seventh grade and a Harvest Ball.

If your reader fills notebooks with made-up creatures, they'll love the idea of one climbing off the page. Who hasn't wished for that?

What to read next

Kyle Bagsby has another fantasy in the library too. The Sword and the Fallen Star opens on a girl who counts the stars every night and can grow a dandelion in her cupped hands in the middle of winter.