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Colin Meloy's Wildwood is a big, strange fantasy adventure for 10 year olds that begins with a baby being carried off by crows.
Prue McKeel has been left in charge of her little brother Mac for the day. So she hitches his red wagon to the back of her bike and takes him on her errands around Portland. It's an ordinary grey Saturday.
Then, at the playground, a few crows start circling. Then dozens. Then a whole swirling cloud of them. They dive, grab Mac by his clothes and lift him into the sky.
Prue chases them on her bike, running stop signs and bumping down pavements, until she reaches the edge of the bluff. She watches the crows disappear into the Impassable Wilderness. It's the huge forest on the edge of the city that every map marks and nobody ever goes into.
She can't tell the police (they'd think she was crazy). She can't bear to tell her parents. So she wraps a soggy blanket in the wagon to look like a sleeping baby, and at five the next morning she sets off to get him back herself.
The one problem is Curtis. He's a boy from her class who still draws superheroes, and he will NOT stop following her.
Prue is great company. She's sarcastic with her dad and fierce with anyone who gets in her way, but underneath it she's terrified it's all her fault. Curtis is the perfect opposite. He's nervous, chatty and not getting "a very friendly vibe" from the trees.
The writing is rich and wordy, with long sentences and plenty of grown-up vocabulary (Prue's proud of using "ergo" at breakfast). It takes its time. The crows take Mac in the first chapter, and the journey through the city to the edge of the forest fills the next three. So this probably suits a confident reader who likes to sink right into a world.
A small heads-up. It's American, Prue swears under her breath a few times, and she throws rocks at Curtis to make him go home (she misses). None of it is heavy, but it's there.
By the time the two of them are under the trees, you just know the forest is going to be far stranger than any grown-up has let on.
If they like the idea of a child heading into dark woods to find someone they've lost, try Otto Tattercoat and the Forest of Lost Things. Otto's mum goes missing in a freezing city ringed by forest, and the only children willing to help are the ones who sleep on the rooftops.
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