Hither & Nigh

Ellen Potter's Hither & Nigh is a magical New York mystery for 10 year olds about a girl who knows every trick in the book, until she meets one she can't explain.

What happens

Nell Batista's been kicked out of four schools. At her fifth, it's expulsion or the Last Chance Club. So after school she's squeezed into a tiny plastic chair in the kindergarten room with Annika, who she used to live next door to, a huge boy everyone calls Crud, and a new kid in a fur-trimmed hat she privately calls The Viking.

Then Mr. Boot arrives. He's late, he's eating takeaway chicken with chopsticks, and he somehow has a file on each of them. (Nell's includes the fact that she's scared of escalators.)

When Crud tries to leave, the alphabet blocks rise up under his chair and lift him seven feet in the air. Then they spell out a message. Mr. Boot's lessons, it turns out, are in magic.

Nell isn't having it. She grew up hanging round the chess hustlers in Washington Square Park and she can spot a scam a mile off. So she's watching Mr. Boot very closely. That mix of wonder and total suspicion makes her super fun company.

There's a sadness underneath it all, though. Nell's brother River disappeared in that same park three years ago. His poster is still on the front door. His bunk is still made up above hers, with his stuffed owl waiting on the pillow.

So when Mr. Boot asks her to picture something she's lost, and she glimpses a boy on the playground who looks just like River, it really hurts. It's a lovely, aching moment and it pulls you straight into the mystery.

It's funny too. Mr. Boot insists you have to "wake up" your chopsticks by annoying them, and Nell's dad lets a total stranger climb in through the window to escape a boring dinner party upstairs.

Something to bear in mind. The missing brother is at the heart of the story, and the family's grief is very real on the page. There's some meanness between the kids too, including an embarrassing video one girl sent round about a classmate. For a reader who's already quite happy with a bit of sadness in their stories, it gives the magic real weight.

What to read next

If they want another girl who refuses to believe her brother is gone, Amari and the Night Brothers starts with Amari in the principal's office for standing up for him. She's sure his secret job has something to do with where he went.