Starfall

Paul Dixon's Starfall is a magical adventure for 11 year olds about a girl who is handed a wolf cub from another world at midnight.

What happens

Sam is thirteen and camping at the top of a mountain in Washington State to watch a meteor shower. Her best friend Virginia is in the tent outside. Sam is alone in an old fire lookout tower.

At midnight a doorway of light opens in the corner. Through it comes an enormous white wolf, bleeding, with a black cub in her mouth. She tells Sam to take care of her baby. Then she turns on the slimy creature coming through behind her, and they both vanish.

The cub is Starfall, a Star Wolf. She talks straight into Sam's head, flies on columns of meteor fire and eats stars for breakfast. Well, meteors.

She's also a baby, and she's very funny. Starfall gets stuck in a window. She laughs like a yodelling husky when you find her tickly spot. She has firm opinions about phones (bad things) and about being called a dog (she is NOT a dog).

Sam tells the story looking back, and you feel her wonder from that very first night. There's a lot about friendship too. Virginia is growing up faster than Sam, into make-up and boys and her phone, and Sam isn't sure where she fits any more. Plenty of readers this age will know that feeling.

And there's a mystery. Sam's dad always says he's a physicist but her mum was a witch. Her mum died when Sam was two. Or did she?

Some of it is properly creepy, though. When Sam touches the monster's weapon she gets a horrible vision of slimy creatures with blood-red gills closing in on a flock of sheep. It leaves a stinging black stain around her eyes that won't wash off. If your reader's happy with a bit of horror in their fantasy, they'll be gripped. A more sensitive reader might want to share those pages with you.

What to read next

For a younger take on a wolf nobody else believes in, try Emma Barnes's Wolfie. Lucie's uncle brings her a present he swears is a dog, and at midnight it starts to talk.