When I was a child, I searched for books that resonated with me. Fantasy was escapist fun but bore little relevance to my life. Realistic fiction often did but lacked the imagination I craved. When I read a book about a boy who wins a magic ticket to a chocolate factory and enters a whimsical yet shockingly dangerous world, I was hooked. Magical realism books take place in the real world but have an extraordinary element that drives the story. They shake up the mundane to expose the fantastic lurking within. This is where I turned to write my stories.
When 11-year-old Jackson faces recurrent anxiety after his life is disrupted by financial hardship, his old imaginary friend, a giant purple cat named Crenshaw, reappears. Within the fantasy, Applegate addresses serious issues including homelessness, food insecurity, and disability.
Children turning to their imagination to find inner strength is a theme I found relatable. Empathy oozes into your fingertips with every page.
The heart-warming new story about family and friendships from Newbery Medal-winner Katherine Applegate.
Life is tough for ten-year-old Jackson. The landlord is often at the door, there's not much food in the fridge and he's worried that any day now the family will have to move out of their home. Again.
Crenshaw is a cat. He's large, he's outspoken and he's imaginary. He's come back into Jackson's life to help him but is an imaginary friend enough to save this family from losing everything?
A heart-warming story about family and friendships from Newbery medal winner Katherine Applegate.
A middle-aged man, adrift in life, returns to his childhood home to center himself and reminisce about the strange events once encountered by his 7-year-old self. The story takes place in an isolated English countryside rife with the gentle melancholy of nostalgia. But within its depths lies absolute terror.
“Oh, monsters are scared," said Lettie. "That's why they're monsters.”
Initially written as a short story, it expanded into a novella, as stories are wont to do when they have so much more to say. Gaiman is a master at using magical realism to balance fantasy and horror.
'Neil Gaiman's entire body of work is a feat of elegant sorcery. He writes with such assurance and originality that the reader has no choice but to surrender to a waking dream' ARMISTEAD MAUPIN
'Some books just swallow you up, heart and soul' JOANNE HARRIS
'Summons both the powerlessness and wonder of childhood, and the complicated landscape of memory and forgetting' GUARDIAN
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'My favourite response to this book is when people say, 'My childhood was nothing like that - and it was as if…
Resting Places follows one woman’s journey after the devastating news of her son’s death. Elizabeth ekes out a lonely and strained relationship with her husband while trying to lose her grief in alcohol. A chance meeting with a man on the side of the road spurs her to travel cross-country…
12-year-old Jerome, a Black boy shot by a White police officer, tells his story in alternating sections before and after his death. Jerome finds his purpose as a Ghost Boy after he realizes the only living person he can communicate with is Sarah, the daughter of the cop who shot him.
Rhodes uses magical realism to create a connection and explore a conversation that would otherwise be impossible. She tackles the controversial topic with moderation appropriate for young readers while still packing a powerful emotional punch.
A heartbreaking and powerful story about a black boy killed by a police officer, drawing connections through history, from award-winning author Jewell Parker Rhodes.
Only the living can make the world better. Live and make it better.
Twelve-year-old Jerome is shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real threat. As a ghost, he observes the devastation that's been unleashed on his family and community in the wake of what they see as an unjust and brutal killing.
Soon Jerome meets another ghost: Emmett Till, a boy from a very different time but similar circumstances. Emmett…
12-year-old Miranda receives notes from an inscrutable person from the future trying to save one of her friends. This is both a beautifully written time travel mystery and a starkly realistic novel set in 1979 New York City, tackling topics as diverse as prison reform, single mothers, and racism.
That the story can be both things, seamlessly and without contradiction, makes the novel an elegant example of magical realism.
Miranda's life is starting to unravel. Her best friend, Sal, gets punched by a kid on the street for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The key that Miranda's mum keeps hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then a mysterious note arrives: 'I am coming to save your friend's life, and my own. I ask two favours. First, you must write me a letter.'
The notes keep coming, and Miranda slowly realises that whoever is leaving them knows things no one should know. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she…
Kidnapped. Blackmailed. Now, she must choose the future of the empire.
18th-century Kashgar. Hidligh has only ever wanted safety and a full belly. On the street and living hand-to-mouth, the beautiful young woman is rapidly running out of any option but prostitution. So when she’s abducted by a Muslim noblewoman,…
Life is bleak for James, an orphaned boy trapped with unloving aunts, until he comes across an old man with a bag of crocodile tongues. This leads to a journey across the Atlantic inside a giant peach.
I especially love this book because it was Dahl’s first, written after he completed his stint as a British spy in America during WWII and before he emerged as a celebrated children’s author. The many absurd poems recited by human-sized Centipede reflect the (much bawdier) poems Dahl exchanged with friends during the war.
“I’ve eaten many strange and scrumptious dishes in my time / Like jellied gnats and dandyprats and earwigs cooked in slime”
Dahl’s whimsical exuberance has inspired me and generations of children and adults alike.
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl in magnificent full colour.
James Henry Trotter lives with two ghastly hags. Aunt Sponge is enormously fat with a face that looks boiled and Aunt Spiker is bony and screeching. He's very lonely until one day something peculiar happens. At the end of the garden a peach starts to grow and GROW AND GROW. Inside that peach are seven very unusual insects - all waiting to take James on a magical adventure. But where will they go in their GIANT PEACH and what will happen to the horrible aunts if they stand…
12-year-old Jake has been suppressing his heartbreak over the loss of his mother for the past four years. But his emotions have a way of haunting his dreams and bubbling to the surface when he least expects it. When Jake learns how to take control in his dreams, he becomes a lucid dreamer, and that’s when the battle really heats up.
As someone who has experienced the loss of a parent as a child, I wanted to portray the simmering anger that swells when you suppress your emotions. I used magical realism to describe that inner struggle in an active and exciting way for both young and adult readers.
A fast-moving investigation set in contemporary Shetland.
When an internet lifestyle influencer arrives on Shetland to document her ‘perfect’ holiday, the locals are somewhat sceptical. Joining a boat trip to the remote islands of St Kilda with sailing sleuth Cass Lynch and her partner DI Gavin Macrae, the young woman…
The Pianist's Only Daughter
by
Kathryn Betts Adams,
ThePianist's Only Daughter is a frank, humorous, and heartbreaking exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.
Social worker and gerontologist Kathryn Betts Adams spent decades negotiating evolving family dynamics with her colorful and talented parents: her mother, an English scholar and poet, and her father, a pianist…
