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Summary
Summary
From #1 New York Times best-selling author Robert Beatty comes a thrilling new series set in the magical world of Serafina.
Move without a sound. Steal without a trace.
Willa, a young night-spirit of the Great Smoky Mountains, is her clan's best thief. She creeps into the homes of day-folk under cover of darkness and takes what they won't miss. It's dangerous work--the day-folk kill whatever they do not understand--but Willa will do anything to win the approval of the padaran, the charismatic leader of the Faeran people.
When Willa's curiosity leaves her hurt and stranded in the day world, she calls upon an ancient, unbreakable bond to escape. Only then does she discover the truth: not all day-folk are the same, and the magical foundations that have guarded the Faeran for eons are under attack.
As forces of unfathomable destruction encroach on her home, Willa must decide who she truly is. To save the day-folk family that has become her own--and lift the curse that has robbed her people of their truth--Willa will meet deadly force with trusted alliance, violence with shelter, and an ever-changing world with a steady heartbeat of courage.
Author Notes
Robert Beatty is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of the Serafina series and the Willa of the Wood series published by Disney Hyperion. Loved by young readers and adults alike, the Serafina and Willa books are being taught in over a thousand classrooms nationwide and have been translated into over 22 languages. Robert lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Asheville, North Carolina with his wife and three daughters. He writes full-time now, but in his past lives, Robert was one of the early pioneers of cloud computing, the founder/CEO of Plex Systems, the co-founder of Beatty Robotics, and the chairman/CTO of Narrative magazine. In 2007, he was named an Entrepreneur of the Year. When asked about the inspiration for his books, Robert said, "The Serafina and Willa books grew out of my desire to write stories about unusual and heroic young girls for my three daughters."
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this charming middle grade adventure set in Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains in 1900, Willa, a young Faeran, or night-spirit, is caught between her own slowly dying clan and the human "day-folk," whom she's always been taught to fear and avoid. As a jaetter or hunter-thief, Willa is responsible for stealing from the day-folk to benefit her clan and its charismatic leader, the padaran. But a botched scavenging attempt reveals that not all humans are murderous monsters. Her additional discovery that her own people hold dangerous secrets prompts her to defy the enigmatic padaran and seek a way to correct a grievous wrong. Faced with the potential destruction of everything she's known, Willa takes control of her own destiny. In this series starter set in the same world as his Serafina books, Beatty conjures up a resourceful, compassionate heroine. Full of atmospheric details and richly described magic ("As the branches reached out over the water to hold her, they rustled in the wind, talking"), this well-paced tale asks insightful questions about the relationship between nature and humans. Ages 8-12. Agent: Bill Contardi, Brandt & Hochman. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
The Faeran, magical wood-dwellers, have always lived peacefully alongside the Cherokee in this story set in the Great Smoky Mountains in 1900. Now, loggers and settlers move in, threatening the region's beauty and inhabitants. Young Faeran Willa, who's been taught to fear humans, flees her restrictive clan and finds herself seeking refuge with a human and helping him. Beatty reminds readers of the strength and sacrifices renewal demands. (c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The old sourwood trees, the rushing streams and rivers, and the great mountain are home to 12-year-old Willa. She and her mamaw live in Dead Hollow with hundreds of her dwindling Faeran clan. Ruled over by their fearsome leader and god, the padaran, the Faeran are a woodland race who once numbered in the thousands, living on the Smoky Mountain as stewards of the forest. Under the rule of the padaran, the old ways of speaking to animals and plants, foraging and caretaking, and using the old language are forbidden. Instead, Faeran children are forced to speak Eng-lish and drafted into his fearsome army of trained hunter-thieves called jaetters, who must steal from the day-folk, or white homesteaders. One night, Willa breaks into a homesteader's cabin and is badly wounded. When the human man sees that she's so gravely hurt, he tries to helpto her shock. Willa flees to Dead Hollow, where she is shocked to discover a young Cherokee boy along with many other human children imprisoned. As she sets out to unravel this mystery, she grows to understand the power of individual choice and of standing up for what's right. Beatty writes a close third-person narration from Willa's perspective, allowing readers to see the various humans she encounters through her eyes: the Cherokee the Faeran predated but live peacefully alongside; the day-folk the jaetters steal from; and the loggers and developers who do violence to them alland with whom the padaran has more in common than he should.A moving, atmospheric journey of hope. (Fantasy. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Readers who love adventure stories featuring fairies and the natural world will have a special affinity for Beatty's latest. The author of the Serafina series has created a world within a world among the Smoky Mountains of Appalachia. Willa is one of the Faeran, magical folk who live in a woodsy hive hidden high above the world of humans, who they prey on, stealing food and items they need. But are the day-folk as mindlessly cruel as the charismatic leader of the Faeran claims? Or are the Faeran people being misled? A nighttime encounter with a kind but sad homesteader has Willa questioning everything. When intrepid Willa discovers human children being kept in an underground prison by her leader, she investigates, at her own risk. Her ability to call on her environment to blend into her surroundings also allows Willa to see the leader for what he is. Can she save the children, and maybe even her people, in time? Expect this series to be popular, and buy the first volume accordingly.--Karen Cruze Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Girls & boys By Dennis Kelly. Performed live by Carey Mulligan. (Audible.) Kelly's play - part of Audible Studios' series of original productions .. staged at the Minetta Lane Theater in New York City's Greenwich Village - tells the story of a woman who has used manipulation and smarts to win what she has wanted in life. Mulligan's solo performance, captured here in audio, has been widely praised for its intensity. willa of the wood By Robert Beatty. Read by Emily Rankin. (Listening Library.) Returning to Serafina, his imagined magical world, Beatty presents a new middle-grade series revolving around the character of Willa, a young night-spirit who becomes stranded in the world of the day-folk, deadly force By Lawrence O'Donnell. Read by the author. (HarperAudio.) The MSNBC host revisits the 1975 police shooting of an unarmed black man in Boston. The victim's widow turned to O'Donnell's father as a lawyer for her case, the terrible By Yrsa Daley-Ward. Read by the author and Howard Daley-Ward. (Penguin Audio.) A coming-ofage memoir by the British model and writer who's achieved fame as an "fnstagram poet" of particular lyricism and bracing honesty. Indianapolis By Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic. Read by John Bedford Lloyd. (Simon & Schuster Audio.) The sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis during World War ? was the greatest naval disaster in United States history. Vincent and Vladic go beyond the disaster to describe the nearly 60-year fight to exonerate the ship's captain. "The country treated them as dangerous potential traitors by shipping them to internment camps, then abruptly expected them to take up arms for Uncle Sam. For some Japanese-American young men, the dissonance was too great and they refused. These 'no-no boys' went from the camps to prison to postwar limbo. John Okada chose to serve, but his 1957 novel no-no boy followed Ichiro Yamada as he returned home to Seattle from prison, bitter and filled with regret over his decision. The book, newly relevant today, evolves into a group portrait of immigrant parents and American children, conflicted veterans and no-no boys, those back home from the camps and those repatriated to Japan alike, all trying to move on from the same injustice. For me the most powerful character is the disillusioned war hero Kenji, who lost a leg and must watch as doctors amputate higher and higher as the infection creeps up the stump, 'whose terrible wound paid no heed to the cessation of hostilities.' Ichiro and Kenji cruise to Portland in an Oldsmobile refitted for the vet, trying to live up to the urgent request to 'prove to them that you can be an American worthy of the frailties of the country as well as the strengths.' " - NICHOLAS KULISH, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, ON WHAT HE'S READING.