Black Bird, Blue Road

Sofiya Pasternack's Black Bird, Blue Road is an adventure for 10 year olds about a girl who refuses to lose her twin brother.

What happens

Ziva wakes up on her twelfth birthday with one thought in her head. Today she has to cut off Pesah's finger.

Pesah is very ill. His skin is covered in lumps and pale patches, he can't walk any more and he can't feel his hands. The servants won't look after him properly, so Ziva does it all herself.

It's set a thousand years ago in Atil, a busy trading city on the Caspian Sea. Ziva is a Khazar girl who wants to be a judge like her Baba, even though everyone tells her girls can't be judges. Her answer is Devorah the Prophetess, and she's very happy to shout it at a rude boy in the middle of the market!

Then a letter arrives. Their uncle, a doctor, wants to take Pesah away to a city on the far side of the empire. He's coming for him at Rosh Hashanah, only a month off. So Ziva decides she'll just have to find a cure before then.

Later the twins run away together, and the road leads them to a boy who is half demon and a search for a city where nobody is supposed to die.

What makes it so lovely to read is the pair of them. Ziva is all fire and stubbornness. Pesah is gentle and super clever (he reads Greek and Latin and plans to be a doctor), and he's the one who keeps her calm. When she picks up the shears, he's the one smiling at her and telling her not to worry. Who wouldn't want a brother like that?

There's a storyteller's voice at the start too, talking straight to you. It tells you Ziva managed two out of three impossible things, then makes you wait to find out which two.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The illness is described honestly, and the finger scene happens on the page in the second chapter. It's quick and it isn't gory, but the finger does drop into a bucket, and afterwards Ziva buries it with the others. A child who's squeamish about injuries, or worried about someone poorly at home, might find that hard.

For a reader who likes a fierce heroine and a story rooted in a real time and place, it's gripping from the very first line.

What to read next

If Ziva's loyalty to her brother gets to them, Island at the End of Everything is about another girl fighting to stay with someone she loves, on an island where people with leprosy are sent to live.