Gossamer Summer

Ten-year-old Jojo used to relish telling fairy stories, but when her Grandma Nan died the summer before this book’s start, Jojo’s interest in the stories died, too. Instead, she spends her summer vacation playing outside the family’s countryside home with her three sisters, 11-year-old Maisie and twin five-year-olds Amy and Bee, while their author mother works on deadline. When her sisters insist on building fairy gardens and find a “squirrel-sized greenish person” napping on their porch, Jojo realizes that each story the siblings have told has created a real fairyland. The tales have even established a catastrophic prophecy about innumerable flying skeletal creatures attacking a fen fairyland—creatures that are primed to return. Joined by 10-year-old neighbor Theo, jocular fairy Roland, and aloof cat Fabio, the siblings must rescue a boggy realm from their own fantasies in two days’ time. An omniscient narrator sets a playful tone and brisk pace in this humorous, E. Nesbit–feeling fantasy from Bouwman (A Crack in the Sea), and the fairies and younger sisters provide comic relief as Jojo and other characters unpack grief of their own. Maisie and Jojo are described as being paler than Amy and Bee. Ages 8–12. Agent: Tricia Lawrence, Erin Murphy Literary. (May)