Journey's End

September 5, 2016
Adventure and friendship are the hallmarks of Hawkins’s (the Rebel Belle series) magical, mystical tale of a small Scottish town and the encroaching fog that threatens it. Nolie Stanhope, 12, is visiting Journey’s End to spend time with her scientist father, who is studying a strange weather phenomenon known as the Boundary. Bel is the same age as Nolie and grew up in town, surrounded by stories of the mysterious fog that now keeps the town afloat with tourism. On the way to becoming friends, the two girls encounter Albert, a 12-year-old boy lost to the sea and fog nearly a century earlier. Together, the trio must find a way to keep the Boundary from swallowing up Journey’s End forever. Filled with delightful interactions and characterizations, the story meanders happily through local myth and legend, seamlessly blending an American and Scottish perspectives while marrying current events with those of a time long past. Rife with emotion and adventure, Hawkins’s novel celebrates the joyful explorations of childhood and the sometimes-difficult lessons learned with age. Ages 8–12. Agent: Holly Root, Waxman Leavell Literary.

A magical adventure in which a strange fog threatens to consume a fishing village in Scotland needs a dynamic voice to narrate. Saskia Maarleveld meets that challenge with relish. Nolie, a spunky ghost-hunting 12-year-old from Georgia, joins her father, a scientist, as he studies the fog, known locally as the Boundary. When she befriends Bel, a local girl, and together they meet a boy who was apparently lost in the fog a century earlier, the fog moves closer. Maarleveld effortlessly blends the characters' American and Scottish accents and nails the differences between the Scottish of today and that of the early 1900s. As Nolie, Maarleveld is persuasive in convincing Bel to help vanquish the fog and charmingly enthusiastic as Albert gleefully takes to the new century he finds himself in. M.F.T. � AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine