Black birds
Stefan Bachmann: Cinders & Sparrows (Greenwillow Books – HarperCollins 2020) Nothing is what it first seems to be. It was the first day of autumn, when the trees change their green clothes to bronze, the pumpkins ripen, and the moon appears early in the sky. It was the perfect time for a witch to return to her ancestral home. Of course, Zita didn’t know at the time that she was a witch and that her family had been protecting the world of the living from those who wanted to harm it for many centuries. Until now, Zita thought she was an orphan, but as it turns out, the famous (infamous) Blackbird Castle belongs to her family. However, when she arrives, she is not welcomed with open arms, but by tough training to be able to do well as the last heir of the Brydgeborn dynasty. She makes both friends and…
Witches along the Hedge
Skye McKenna: Hedgewitch (Welbeck Flame 2022) Skye McKenna was born and raised in Australia. She always wanted to be a writer or illustrator. She liked to make up stories that took place in the remote and sparsely populated areas of Australia where she lived, but it wasn’t until she moved to England that she started writing seriously. She believes that we must experience adventures before we can write them down. In the United Kingdom, she fell in love with the British countryside, so her first novel, Hedgewitch, is also set here. In addition to writing, she works for a charity that tries to improve people’s lives by preserving traditions. In her work, she studies old maps and documents, and has been involved in organizing an exhibition about medieval magicians and alchemists, and she is currently working on a project about storytelling, poetry and songs. Cassie Morgan has been waiting for…
Aveline Jones
Phil Hickes: The Haunting of Aveline Jones (Usborne Publishing 2020) Phil Hickes: The Bewitching of Aveline Jones (Usborne Publishing 2021) Phil Hickes was born in the UK and grew up near Manchester in a house overlooking a graveyard… That explains a lot. As a child, he was always attracted to scary things. He especially liked the books of Alen Garner and Susan Cooper. Because of them, he believed that extraordinary things can happen to ordinary children. This was one of the inspirations for the creepy adventures of Aveline Jones. After the UK, he also lived in Ireland and New Zealand, but finally settled in Oregon with his wife, and on foggy, rainy, pine-scented nights, they listen to the coyotes. In his books, he believes in the mood-creating power of seasons and landscapes. Aveline Jones is an ordinary twelve-year-old girl who is particularly interested in ghost stories. She lives with her…
Teenage witch
Emma Steinkellner: The Okay Witch (Simon & Schuster 2019) Many thanks to Maxim Könyvkiadó for sending me the book! I started the Halloween period in October by reading the book I got at the Bookfestival. Moth is a 13-year-old girl who loves everything related to witches. She lives with her mother, who runs a thrift store and she doesn’t fit in at school. She has no idea that her life will change this Halloween… It turns out that witches do exist, and she even has magic herself. Her mother, on the other hand, is not as happy about this as Moth. Many other secrets from the city’s past come to light, and Moth realizes that magic is not like in the movies and books: it is much more dangerous… The Okay Witch is a very cute story about family and how everyone is eager to belong somewhere. All this with…
Halloween month
Halloween is an Irish feast of Celtic origin, which is celebrated mainly in Anglo-Saxon areas and came to America with immigrants, and from there it spread worldwide due to globalization. Its name means All Saints’ Eve. One of its ancestor is the Celtic Samhain, which name in Gaelic means the month of November, but that is also the name of the feast, which began at nightfall on October 31 and ended on November 1. This marked the end of the Celtic Old Year and the beginning of the New Year. According to the belief of the Celts, at this time the dead return and can move into the living, so you have to dress up in spooky costumes to scare them away. In addition to the characteristics of Samhain, Roman and Christian elements were also mixed into the celebration. Nowadays, however, only the experience of getting dressed remains from the…
New releases I’m looking forward to reading (October to December 2022)
Phil Hickes: The Vanishing of Aveline Jones (Usborne Publishing 2022) A lot of weird and scary things have happened to Aveline Jones. After years of hoping that Aveline’s uncle would return, her mother and aunt finally decided to sell his house. Sneaking into his office, Aveline discovers that her uncle has been researching possible supernatural activity around an ancient burial mound – linking it to the unexplained disappearances of local residents. There are dark, magical forces at work in the city, and they are doing everything they can to stay hidden… Jaclyn Moriarty: The Astonishing Chronicles of Oscar from Elsewhere (Guppy Publishing 2022) This book is Oscar’s own telling of his adventures from Monday to Friday last week. He was just about to truant from school when he suddenly found himself in a completely different world, and now he, together with Bronte Mettlestone, Esther, Imogen and Alejandro, is tasked with…
Bookfestival and the 30-year-old Bestsellers Bookshop
Finally, after a two-year hiatus, we were able to attend the Bookfestival again. The event, organized for the 27th time this year, took place at Millenáris Park between September 29 and October 2. The guests of honor at this year’s festival were the Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexsijevic and Slovakia. Parallel with the Bookfestival, the European First Novel Festival took place as well. For me, the festival is not only interesting because of the book fair, but we also have the opportunity to get a glimpse into the literary life of other countries, as the exhibitors often have booklets in which we can read some excerpts from the works of the writers of the given country in English or Hungarian translation. This year, I managed to acquire Romanian and Slovak book catalogs, together with the booklet of the European First Novel Festival, as well as an exclusive volume presenting the winners…