WINTER WOOD

In this finale to the Touchstone Trilogy, past and present magically converge when 12-year-old Midge completes the work begun by her great-great aunt Celandine decades before to rescue five ancient tribes of little people hiding from the human world in the woods of Mill Farm. Sensing their end is near, the desperate little people ask Midge to find the Orbis, an instrument entrusted to Celandine for safekeeping and crucial to their survival. Midge discovers Celandine still alive in a nursing home but with no memory of the little people. With Midge’s help, Celandine gradually pieces together the past, allowing Midge to play a pivotal role in saving the little people they both love. Reminiscent of Tom’s Midnight Garden, intergenerational heroines Celandine and Midge are linked across time in their ability to accept and appreciate the incredible. Behind the briars and brambles, Augarde reveals “truly another world” populated by fantastical fairy folk whose meticulously detailed lives are filled with drama and dreams. A perfectly paced, beautifully crafted and moving end to a memorable fantasy. (Fantasy. 10-14)