The Girl of Ink & Stars

The Girl of Ink & Stars by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is an adventure for 11 year olds about a mapmaker's daughter who has never been allowed past the forest at the edge of her village.

What happens

Isabella is thirteen. She lives on the island of Joya with her Da, whose maps cover every wall of their house. She traces them with a finger every single morning before school.

One wall stops dead at a single word. Incognito. Unknown.

That blank bit is the thing she wants. Not the coastlines her Da has already drawn.

Only nobody leaves Gromera any more. The Governor closed the ports, turned the forest into a border and strung it with thorns and huge bells to warn his guards. Isabella has never heard the bells ring.

Then a girl from her class goes missing. The girl's mother catches Isabella by the wrist in the market square to ask if she has seen her.

The writing is gorgeous and not at all hard work. Ocean currents stitched onto blue paper in gold and black thread. A walking stick carved from an old fishing boat that floats in a puddle and glows in the dark. Ravens on the rooftops where the songbirds used to be. Your reader will want to hold all of it.

There is real sadness in here too, and it is there from chapter one rather than saved up as a twist. Isabella's mother died when she was small. Her twin brother Gabo died three years ago of the same sickness. She still makes his bed every morning. She still whispers into the hollow her father carved along the wall between their two beds so they could talk in the dark.

So that is worth knowing before you hand it over. Grief is not background here. It is the weather Isabella lives in. A child who has recently lost someone may find the opening chapters heavy. A child who is drawn to brave, sad, hopeful stories will love her for exactly the same reason.

The friendship carries a lot of it. Lupe is the Governor's daughter, tall and loud and completely unbothered by what anyone thinks of her, and she adores Isabella when nobody else in the village will go near her.

What to read next

The Way Past Winter is by the same author and has exactly the same pull. Mila's brother is taken in the night by a stranger who came asking for shelter, and she sets off north into a winter that has already lasted five years to get him back.