Eleven-year-old Mayowa is heading to Nigeria for the trip of a lifetime – a long-awaited visit to family she’s never properly known. This is the second title in a dazzlingly imaginative adventure trilogy about one girl’s power to change the world through book-jumping magic and the strength of words, and it will captivate 8+ fans of Pages & Co., Amari and the Night Brothers and The Book of Stolen Dreams. Ever since her British Grandpa Edward passed down his strange and brilliant gift, Mayowa has been learning to master it: leap onto the pages of a book and the emotions inside surge through her, sweeping her into wild, unpredictable adventures. But her British relatives aren’t the only ones keeping secrets. In Nigeria, her enigmatic great-aunt Iya Ibeji welcomes her to Alaafia, a peaceful haven just outside Lagos, and teaches her esin l’oro, an ancient art that reveals the true power of spoken words – a magic that shows Mayowa how language can bend, shape and even rewrite reality itself. Yet mastering magic isn’t her only battle. Caught between her British upbringing and her Nigerian heritage, Mayowa keeps circling back to the question that has haunted her for years: where does she truly belong? When oil is discovered beneath Alaafia, her aunt’s hard-won paradise is suddenly under threat, and Mayowa must call on every part of who she is – British and Nigerian, book-jumper and word-weaver – to protect the people she loves. Saving Alaafia will take both kinds of magic. The real question is whether Mayowa has the courage to use them.
ISBN 13: 9781526661098
Author: Chibundu Onuzo
