Speculation

Nisi Shawl's Speculation is a thoughtful ghost story for 10 year olds about a girl who finds out that a pair of old glasses can make magic happen.

What happens

Winna is ten, tall for her age and absolutely certain magic is real. She's always got her nose in a book about magic. She and her little sister Tupelo are staying with Gramma and Grampa Carl for the holiday weekend while their mum is in hospital.

Then Tupelo sits on Winna's glasses (CRUNCH). Grampa Carl climbs up to the attic and comes back with a replacement. A pair of round silver spectacles with two little stars set into the nose-piece. They were once Great-Aunt Estelle's.

That afternoon Winna wonders out loud whether they might be magic. And the world shimmers. At a tangled old family graveyard she wonders whether ghosts might show themselves to her. And they do.

The magic has rules, which Winna works out like a proper scientist. Wishes don't work. Wondering "what if" does. A ghost girl in a white dress starts following her about, but she can't speak. So how do you talk to someone who has no voice? Winna finds a very clever answer in the steam from her bath.

It's a gentle, curious sort of read. Winna is great company, a bit bossy with her sister and very serious about the rules of magic (she's clearly read her E. Nesbit). There's lots of warm, ordinary family life too. Gramma lays the breakfast table every night before bed, and Grampa Carl calls the girls "bootnose".

It goes to some serious places though. Grampa Carl tells the story of Winna's great-great-grandmother Winona, who was born enslaved. She escaped north while expecting a baby, only for her baby boy to vanish on the day the barn burned down. We also learn that Estelle died of tuberculosis when she was just eleven. Tupelo has a nightmare that their mum has died, and Grampa Carl uses an old-fashioned word for Black people that Winna's family would have heard all the time.

For a thoughtful reader who can handle those parts, it's a moving way into family history, with magic at its heart.

What to read next

If they love the idea of magic that comes with rules and catches you out, try Five Children and It by that same E. Nesbit. A grumpy sand-fairy grants the children one wish a day, and the very first one leaves them sitting in a ditch waiting for sunset.