The Kingdom Over the Sea

Zohra Nabi's The Kingdom Over the Sea is a magical adventure for 11 year olds about a girl who follows her mum's last letter to a city that isn't on any map.

What happens

It's been almost a fortnight since Yara's mum didn't come home from her hospital shift. There was an accident, and then a funeral. Yara is twelve, staying with a foster family and packing up the flat she grew up in.

Then she finds a letter tucked in her mum's drawer. It tells her to catch the number 63 bus to Poole Harbour, walk to the end of Ferry Way and read out a poem. Oh, and to ask for a sorceress.

Yara doesn't believe a word of it. She goes anyway (wouldn't you?).

What happens at the end of that dock is properly magical. A stone path rises out of the waves. A ferryman with eyes like a snake's arrives in a little blue-sailed boat, and the crossing is a terrifying storm under stars that won't keep still.

Zehaira itself is gorgeous to read about, all spice stalls, silks and golden domes. But it isn't friendly. The moment Yara asks for the Sorcerers' Quarter, the whole market turns on her, because here sorcerers are hated and the alchemists who serve the Sultan run everything.

Yara is super company. She's small for her age with a glare that stops adults in their tracks, and she's been campaigning to save libraries since she was little. She also can't keep quiet when someone says something cruel, which gets her into trouble within a few pages. You'll be cheering her on and wincing at the same time.

The grief is real, and it's there from the very first chapter. Yara breathes in the rose water on her mum's headscarf and fights back tears in front of her social worker. On the bus a woman tells her to go back to her own country. For a child who has recently lost someone close, those opening pages could be hard going, so it might be one to share. For readers ready for it, it's a story about being brave when you feel completely alone.

This is an American edition, so there are a few "parking lots" and "potato chips" along the way.

What to read next

For another story about landing in a kingdom where nobody explains the rules, try The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha next. Lukas is a lazy lad from a small town who is pulled out of the sea in a strange land, only to find a whole palace calling him king.