13 Treasures

You are invited into the Faerie realm as soon as you begin to read 13 Treasures by Michelle Harrison. Tanya has had to hide a dark secret her entire life – she can see faeries. At the beginning of the story, her mother, ultimately fed up with Tanya’s misbehavior (caused by taking the blame for the faeries’ mishaps), brings her to her grandmother’s house to live. Tanya’s grandmother, Florence, is not happy about this situation and the feeling is mutual. Florence’s house is also occupied by Amos, the aged former caretaker of her home; Warwick, Amos’s grown son who is the current caretaker; and Fabian, Warwick’s son. The faeries are as relentless at her grandmother’s as they were at her house. Tanya and Fabian have been warned to never go into the woods beside the house. Tanya questions Florence when she finds an article from fifty years ago that tells of a fourteen-year-old girl named Morwenna Bloom who went missing in those woods. Her grandmother tells her that she has never been found. Although her grandmother offers no more information, Tanya finds out that Amos was accused of being the last person with Morwenna when she went missing. Florence gives her a special bracelet with thirteen charms, believed to ward off evil spirits, which has been in the family for many years. When Fabian’s actions cause Tanya’s dog to run into the forbidden woods, their lives will change forever. Entering the woods to find the dog, the teens find themselves face to face with the missing Morwenna Bloom who hasn’t aged at all in the fifty years she has been missing. She begins to lead them somewhere when they are found by Warwick and she disappears. The teens are determined to find Morwenna once again in order to clear Amos’s tarnished reputation. Readers are taken into a secret world unlike any other…things are not as they seem. When the teens get in over their heads, the only hope for Tanya is a young girl, named Red, who can also see faeries. This is a great read for upper elementary through middle school fantasy readers. This novel which reads like a movie is the first in a trilogy – the second book, 13 Curses, comes out June 7th. Click on the book trailer below for more information.