The Problem with Prophecies

Scott Reintgen's The Problem with Prophecies is a funny, big-hearted fantasy for 10 year olds about a girl whose very first vision shows a boy from her street about to die.

What happens

In Celia Cleary's family, the gift of seeing the future skips a generation. Her mum's a lawyer with no magic at all. Her Grammy is a seer who does readings in a very ordinary townhouse (no crystal ball, no cats, plenty of burnt toast).

Celia's first vision is due when she's been alive for exactly 4,444 days. She's been waiting for it since she was three.

It arrives in the middle of a card game. Suddenly she's standing on the road just outside her neighbourhood, watching quiet Jeffrey Johnson walk home from school. A car clips a traffic cone. Another car swerves.

Grammy's answer is gentle and very firm. A death vision means fate has decided, and fate always gets its way. Celia isn't having that. She runs off and starts shoving traffic cones out of the road, then invents a job with the Homeowners' Association when a construction worker asks what on earth she's doing!

It works. Jeffrey walks home safe. Then, on her way back, Celia smells campfire smoke again and sees a brand new accident, this time at school.

What makes it such a good read is Celia's voice. She's brave and stubborn and a bit of a mess, and she's funny even when things are awful. Grammy is a treat as well. She uses an 'old spell' on Celia that turns out to be a firm voice.

There's lots of real life folded in. A best friend who stopped speaking to her after calling her a freak. Two loyal mates at a courtyard table where everyone's proudly weird. A mum she can't quite tell the whole truth to.

Death sits right at the centre of this one, though. Celia watches a boy she knows get hit by a car, then fall from the top of the school bleachers, and Grammy warns that death can be delayed but never undone. A child who worries about accidents might find that heavy going. For a reader who can take it, it's thoughtful and often very funny.

What to read next

If they'd like another girl waiting for her family's magic to show up, try The Islands of Chaldea, which opens with a girl shut underground all night, hoping for the vision every woman in her family has had before her.