Sophie Anderson’s The Thief Who Sang Storms is a folklore-rich fantasy for 9 year olds about a girl waiting for magic that hasn’t turned up.<\/p>\n
Linnet is an alkonost. Her people are descended from the bird-people of Morovia, a floating island in the shape of a broken heart. They have feathers instead of hair, and by the time they’re ten most of them can sing magic. Her father can mesmerise people with his voice. Her mother could call butterflies down onto her wings.<\/p>\n
Linnet is thirteen. Nothing has come.<\/p>\n
Three years ago a ship called Joy went down on a calm, clear day and took both queens of the island with it. Linnet’s mother was on board. Afterwards, a guard captain named Ilya started saying that singing magic caused the wave, and enough people believed him. The alkonosts were banned from singing, then from public places, then pushed into the swamp the flood had left behind.<\/p>\n
That’s where Linnet lives now, with her dad Nightingale, waiting up a red maple for a courtier’s cart to come past so they can rob it.<\/p>\n
The swamp is the best thing in the book. Anderson makes it genuinely lovely instead of grim. Glow-worms glow, bluegill fish burp the blues, and Nightingale plays his grief on a tin guitar. Linnet’s own feathers have turned mud-brown and algae-green because she’s moulted into the place she lives.<\/p>\n
Her friends are a swamp-rat called Whiskers, who smells strong enough to bring tears to a skunk’s eyes, and a toad called Lumpy who lost a leg to a mud crab and grew a spiked sword-leg in its place. He uses it to herd escaping snails back onto the dinner pile. I loved him.<\/p>\n
Something to be ready for. It’s a story about a whole people being blamed for a disaster and shoved out of sight, and it doesn’t soften that. Neighbours inform on each other for small luxuries. Linnet’s mother is dead, though that happened before the book starts and is explained on the first pages rather than sprung on your reader later. The tone is sorrowful more than frightening, and Linnet’s father says the feeling is nostalgia, a yearning for the happiness of the past. If your child has ever asked why people get treated badly for being different, this gives them somewhere to put the question. If they mainly want a jolly quest, this one asks a bit more of them.<\/p>\n
If they take to Linnet’s voice, try The Girl Who Speaks Bear. Yanka was found as a toddler outside a bear cave, she towers over every other twelve-year-old in her village, and she has no idea why she is the way she is either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sophie Anderson’s The Thief Who Sang Storms is a folklore-rich fantasy for 9 year olds about a girl waiting for magic that hasn’t turned up. Linnet is an alkonost. Her people are descended from the bird-people of Morovia, a floating island in the shape of a broken heart. They have feathers instead of hair, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11150,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9077,"lr_next_read_anchor":"The Girl Who Speaks Bear","lr_seo_hook":"A bird-girl whose singing magic never came waits up a tree to rob a cart."},"book_tag":[27],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[926],"class_list":["post-9467","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-fantasy-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-sophie-anderson"],"yoast_title":"The Thief Who Sang Storms by Sophie Anderson | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A bird-girl whose singing magic never came waits up a tree to rob a cart. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n