Lia Park and the Missing Jewel

Jenna Yoon's Lia Park and the Missing Jewel is a Korean fantasy adventure for 10 year olds about a girl who's given up on ever having magic.

What happens

Lia is twelve, and her whole life has been about the International Magic Agency, a secret group that fights monsters ordinary people can't see. Her parents work there. Her best friend Joon can heal himself with glowing hands. Lia is brilliant at Taekkyeon, a Korean martial art (she flattens Joon in sparring), but she has no magic at all. The entrance exam is in five days.

So she's got a backup plan. She'll be best friends with Dior, the most popular girl at school, and she's been invited to her birthday party. Her parents say absolutely not. Lia sneaks out anyway.

It goes horribly. And while she's gone, something happens at home.

You're on Lia's side the whole way, even when she's being a nightmare. She says things to her mum she'd take back in a heartbeat. She's desperate to belong somewhere, and she finds out the hard way that some friends aren't friends at all. The Korean words sprinkled through (Umma, Appa, daebak!) make her family feel warm and real, and there's a LOT of delicious food.

A couple of scenes are worth a parent knowing about. At the party some boys throw Lia into the pool even though she's terrified of water, and she sinks and nearly drowns before a grown-up pulls her out. Later she gets home to find her babysitter slumped in a car and not moving, the house turned upside down and her parents gone.

It's tense and a bit frightening. A child who's anxious about water might find the pool scene hard going. For a reader who loves magic and monsters with a real family at the heart of it, it's a great pick.

The clues are there from the start, which is half the fun. Why do her parents whisper that "she's getting stronger"? What's the fail-safe? And the jewel in the title turns out to be the thing Lia needs to get them back.

What to read next

If they like the idea of the only girl in a magical family with no magic, The Last Fallen Star is a lovely one to go to next. Riley was adopted into a Korean clan of healing witches in Los Angeles, and her big sister is about to be initiated while Riley can't cast a single spell.