Nic Blake and the Remarkables

Angie Thomas's Nic Blake and the Remarkables is a magical adventure for 9 year olds about a girl who's been promised magic lessons for years and still isn't getting them.

What happens

It's Nic's twelfth birthday, and she's finally going to learn the Gift. That's the power Manifestors like her and her dad are born with. First, though, she has to catch a hellhound in the woods.

(The woods are an illusion. The hellhound is her birthday present, a puppy the size of a shoebox that smells of cheese.)

Then her dad says she should wait another year. He said the same thing when she turned nine, ten and eleven, and Nic is not impressed.

Nic lives in Jackson, Mississippi, where most people are Unremarkables. They have no idea that haints and demons are behind half the things that go wrong in their houses. Her dad catches them for a living and sells them to Ms. Lena, who runs a juke joint full of vampires, shapeshifters and Azizas (don't call them fairies).

Then something odd happens. Nic touches Ms. Lena's hands and sees a vision she shouldn't be able to see, and her dad looks terrified, which he almost never is. That same night she sneaks out to meet her favourite author and discovers he knows her dad very well indeed.

From there the secrets pile up. Before long Nic is off searching for a very powerful piece of magic, trying to save her dad from being locked up for something she's sure he didn't do.

Nic tells it all herself, and she's very funny. Her dad warns her that hellhounds can smell fear, and she points out that's easy to say when you're not three feet from one! But there's real feeling under the jokes. Every birthday she wishes for a bigger family, and she doesn't know why her mum isn't around.

The history is woven right in too. Her dad's lessons remind her that nothing about Black people started with slavery, and the Gift goes back to their ancestors in Africa.

It's American in its voice, full of "y'all" and "a'ight", which suits it perfectly. There's a demon in a cage and a bit of spooky stuff, but it's more exciting than scary.

What to read next

If your reader wants more Black folklore with a modern kid in the middle of it, Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky is in the library too. Tristan is packed off to his grandparents' farm in Alabama and ends up face to face with Brer Rabbit and John Henry.