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Misa Sugiura's Momo Arashima Steals the Sword of the Wind is a funny, fast and properly spooky adventure for 11 year olds about a girl who has spent years trying NOT to believe her mum's stories.
When Momo was little, Mum filled her head with Japanese gods and monsters. Thunder was Raijin playing his drum. A green kappa lurked by the creek. Then a teacher called it an overactive imagination, and Momo decided the only safe thing was to be normal.
It hasn't worked. She's about to turn twelve and she's number seventy-one on a list ranking all seventy-one kids in seventh grade. At home she's the one who remembers the bills and the doctor's appointments, because Mum has never got over Dad being lost at sea (that happened before the story starts).
Then a fox turns up in the back garden. The next day he's at the bus stop, standing on his hind legs in a waistcoat and a flat cap, and he tips it at her. Of course Momo tells the wrong people.
Mum gives her a scratchy straw rope for her birthday and makes her promise never to take it off. So what does Momo do the minute she gets to the shopping mall?
What comes for her is a shikome, a death hag in a ragged ball gown and far too much make-up. Momo ends up in a stolen car driven by Niko, a fox who can't hold a licence, flinging peach gummies out of the window to slow the hag down. Danny, her old best friend turned cool kid, has jumped in too.
It's genuinely funny. Momo's voice is sharp and sarky, and Niko insults everyone in lovely old-fashioned words ("addlepated airhead" is a favourite).
The shikome is described in grim detail, with her scalp peeling and a smell like rotting meat, and the chase is scary. There's also a lot of worry about Mum's grief. Momo remembers a summer spent afraid that Mum might throw herself off the cliffs where Dad was lost. A reader who's sensitive about a sad or unwell parent might find that part hard.
If your reader loves monsters and doesn't mind a shiver, the jokes and the friendship keep it bouncing along.
If they're after another girl who'd rather her family kept its old stories quiet, try Lei and the Fire Goddess. Anna is twelve and dreads another summer in Hawaii learning her tūtū's tales, until the tales stop being just stories.
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