Magical Venice – The Girl of Glass

Holly Webb's The Girl of Glass is a magical Venice story for 9 year olds about a girl with magic in her fingertips and a little sister who is very ill.

What happens

Mariana lives on the island of Murano, across the lagoon from Venice. Her father is a glassmaker-magician who breathes spells into molten glass. Mariana longs to learn too. But girls can't be glassmakers, so she's stuck dusting the shop.

Home is hard. Her little half-sister Eliza is four and getting weaker every day, and her stepmother keeps sending Mariana across the water for cures that never work. This time it's a magic shop on St Mark's Square, where an old magician reads her thoughts and conjures a silver fish out of thin air.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Eliza's illness runs right through the opening chapters and it isn't hidden. She's pale and breathless, and the magician tells Mariana plainly that no spell can mend her. Eliza's death is where the story's magic begins, because her grieving father goes on to make a glass girl who looks just like her. That isn't a spoiler, it's the heart of the book.

For a child who has lost someone, or who finds illness in stories upsetting, this could be too close to home. But for a reader who likes a story that isn't afraid to be sad, it's written with real tenderness. Mariana loves her sister fiercely, and the little moments between them (a pet fish, a fishbowl with glass seaweed that sways, a whispered chat in bed) are lovely.

The setting is gorgeous. Little boats across the lagoon, painters' studios, palaces, the glassworks furnace and a flock of golden spell-birds. The magic feels real, like something you could touch.

Mariana is a great heroine too. She's cross, a bit sharp-tongued and absolutely sure there's magic inside her, whatever her father says. When one of her tears turns to glass on the beach, it's a very satisfying moment!

There's a funny side as well. Mariana gets landed with Lady Julia, a count's spoiled little daughter who keeps pretending she's about to topple into the canal.

What to read next

If your reader falls for this magical Venice, try The Water Horse. It's set in the same city, and it follows Olivia, a young princess who realises she's been living under a spell since she was tiny.