The Disability Book Archive

[ID: A book cover. A hand holding an ice-cream cone can be seen in the foreground, against the backdrop of a town under a dark blue, cloudy sky. There are three scoops on the cone, purple at the bottom, yellow in the centre, and pink at the top, topped with a brown sauce and a cherry. The title is written on the ice cream and reads, from top to bottom:
“a” in blue, lower case lettering on the pink scoop
“snicker of” on the yellow scoop, with “snicker” in purple caps and “of” in blue
lowercase lettering
“magic” on the purple scoop, in blue caps.
At the bottom of the book, across the hand, it reads:
“by” in lowercase, blue lettering
“Natalie Lloyd” in white, capitals /end]

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Content Warning:

• Smoking
• Magical Violence (Duals, Curses, etc)

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Summary:

Introducing an extraordinary new voice—a magical debut that will make your skin tingle, your eyes glisten . . .and your heart sing.

Midnight Gulch used to be a magical place, a town where people could sing up thunderstorms and dance up sunflowers. But that was long ago, before a curse drove the magic away. Twelve-year-old Felicity knows all about things like that; her nomadic mother is cursed with a wandering heart.

But when she arrives in Midnight Gulch, Felicity thinks her luck’s about to change. A “word collector,” Felicity sees words everywhere—shining above strangers, tucked into church eves, and tangled up her dog’s floppy ears—but Midnight Gulch is the first place she’s ever seen the word “home.” And then there’s Jonah, a mysterious, spiky-haired do-gooder who shimmers with words Felicity’s never seen before, words that make Felicity’s heart beat a little faster.

Felicity wants to stay in Midnight Gulch more than anything, but first, she’ll need to figure out how to bring back the magic, breaking the spell that’s been cast over the town . . . and her mother’s broken heart.

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Notes:

This book was a 2014 Goodreads Choice Nominee for the Best Middle Grade and Childrens book award. It won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award (2015).

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Archivist Comments:

Personally think that the magic in this sounds genuinely interesting.

This was the first middle-grade novel that was suggested to me. Also the book that made me research book age categories.

I’ve seen people comparing this to “A Mango Shaped Space”.

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