The Fire, the Water, and Maudie McGinn

Sally J Pla's The Fire, the Water, and Maudie McGinn is a moving summer story for 10 year olds about an autistic girl, a wildfire and a promise to keep quiet that's eating her up.

What happens

Maudie is thirteen and a half. Every summer she flies from Texas to stay with her dad in the cabin he built in the California mountains. It's the one place she feels completely safe. On her very first day, a wildfire forces them off the mountain, and by the afternoon they're in an emergency shelter with nothing but the clothes they're wearing.

Maudie tells the story herself. When the world gets too loud and too bright, she makes lists of everything she can smell, hear, touch and see, a trick a kind teacher taught her. Some of her thoughts come out as little poems. You're right inside her head, and it's a very honest place to be.

Her dad is lovely. He's quiet like her, and three squeezes of the hand mean "I love you". Her mum is harder work. She makes YouTube videos, and every April she does an episode about how difficult it is to have an autistic daughter. Maudie describes watching herself on it, and it's painful to read.

The fire sends the two of them south to Conwy, the seaside town Dad grew up in. They live in a borrowed camper. At dawn on the first morning she meets Etta, an older surfer with silver dreadlocks, and blurts out that she wants to learn. Can Maudie be brave enough to try?

This one needs a grown-up nearby. Maudie is carrying a secret about home, and the hints are clear. Her stepdad Ron has a temper. He shoved her down into her seat the first time they were alone, and she drops a line about his marble floors (you do not want to hit your head on them, "Take it from one who knows"). Her mum has told her it's nobody's business. The fire scenes are scary too, with flames right up to the roadside and a bang behind them.

For a child living with anger at home, this could land close. For many readers, though, it's a hopeful, gentle book about finding your voice, and the ocean scenes are gorgeous.

What to read next

If Maudie's voice stays with them, try A Kind of Spark. Addie is autistic too, and it opens with a teacher ripping up her story in front of the whole class.