Julie Abe’s Eva Evergreen and the Cursed Witch is a magic adventure for 9 year olds about a twelve-year-old witch who has hardly any magic and goes after the biggest problem in the realm anyway.<\/p>\n
Eva has just been given her rank. Novice Witch, the first of five, and the lowest.<\/p>\n
She’s earned it, though. Her Novice quest was only a moon ago, in a coastal town called Auteri that she swore to protect and then had to defend, so this picks up with the ink barely dry on her badge.<\/p>\n
What she hasn’t got is power. A touch of magic is all she has, and she knows it. She tries to open the ground and turns a patch of white flowers gold instead. Her broomstick, the Fiery Phoenix, tips her straight off onto a narrow rocky ledge. Her mother does the same spells beautifully and Eva watches her hands to try to learn how.<\/p>\n
Then Eva casts a spell on a map of the realm, looking for the source of the Culling.<\/p>\n
The Culling is the cursed storm that hits Rivelle every year with no warning. One year an unquenchable wildfire. Another year the typhoon that struck Auteri. And the map says it starts at the tower of Grand Master Hayato Grottel, who leads the Council of Witches and Wizards, and who is due in the queen’s chamber any minute.<\/p>\n
So Eva and her mother fly low through the back streets of the capital, staying in the shadow of the crystal castle, trying to get to the queen first.<\/p>\n
The pleasure of this one is that Eva is genuinely the least powerful person in every room and she keeps going in anyway. There’s a good bit where she’s covered in cobwebs and dust bunnies, about to be presented to a queen, and she’s brushing herself down and repeating the plan under her breath. Anyone who’s ever been the smallest or the newest will know that feeling.<\/p>\n
Ember helps. He’s a flamefox who lives in her knapsack and has opinions, and the warmth of him through the canvas is exactly the detail a nervous child will hang on to.<\/p>\n
It’s not a gentle world. The Culling burns and floods real towns, guards stand round the throne room with their hands on their swords, and Eva’s mother is frightened enough that her hands shake. But nothing in the opening chapters is nasty and the fear is the adventure kind.<\/p>\n
This follows an earlier book, so a reader who likes things in order should know that. It reads perfectly well on its own, but the first quest is behind her before page one.<\/p>\n
If they like a witch who has to work for every spell, The Glass Witch has Adelaide Goode, twelve and the weakest witch born in three centuries, trying to conjure more money and only managing to make the dead presidents on the notes in her hand pull faces at her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Julie Abe’s Eva Evergreen and the Cursed Witch is a magic adventure for 9 year olds about a twelve-year-old witch who has hardly any magic and goes after the biggest problem in the realm anyway. Eva has just been given her rank. Novice Witch, the first of five, and the lowest. She’s earned it, though. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11431,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9083,"lr_next_read_anchor":"The Glass Witch","lr_seo_hook":"A witch with a pinch of magic goes after the storm cursing her realm."},"book_tag":[1045],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[514],"class_list":["post-7348","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-adventure-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-julie-abe"],"yoast_title":"Eva Evergreen and the Cursed Witch by Julie Abe | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A witch with a pinch of magic goes after the storm cursing her realm. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n