STRANGEWORLDS TRAVEL AGENCY

Have (magic) suitcase, will travel.

Twelve-year-old English girl Flick, the imaginative daughter of a post office employee and a garbage collector, isn’t thrilled about moving from their urban tower block to the outskirts of a posh village—until the day she wanders into a magical travel agency. There, she meets lonely 18-year-old shopkeeper Jonathan, who inducts Flick into The Strangeworlds Society, whose members use suitcases to explore different worlds. Jonathan has been abandoned following his father’s mysterious, multiverse-related disappearance, and the two set out to find him. This is classic children’s literature following in a very specific tradition, with portals and adventures that pique the imagination more than the adrenaline. The writing is at times reminiscent of Diana Wynne Jones, who similarly envisioned multiverses and populated her very British fantasies with real children frustrated by real concerns: Flick, conscious of her family’s socio-economic status, worries about her new school and carries heavy responsibilities for housework and minding her baby brother, as her parents work long hours and opposite shifts. This series opener takes a picaresque route—including a world of children who never grow up, a giant tree full of magic crystals, and more—and by the end, something larger is clearly in motion. Readers will be eager to visit more worlds with irrepressible Flick and prickly Jonathan. Characters read as White by default.

Utterly delightful.