Newbery author Karen Cushman (The Midwife's Apprentice; Catherine, Called Birdy), best known for her historical fiction, makes her first foray into fantasy with Grayling's Song, set in a magical, medieval England.
Grayling is an obedient, hardworking girl who lives in a thatched cottage with her mother, a healer who trades charms and tonics for hams and coats. Grayling privately rails against the relentless tyranny of the mother she both loves and fears. But when their cottage bursts into flames and her mother is, shockingly, turned into a tree by some invisible evil, it's up to Grayling to take charge. Neither brave nor gifted with magic herself, she must head out into the "strange and dangerous" world and sing her mother's "gathering song" to summon the wizards, hags and soothsayers who might know how to break the curse. It must be true that "summat wicked be in the kingdom," as the townspeople suggest.
"Tangles and toadstones!" as Grayling would say: her very first night on the road, a mouse unwittingly eats all of her potions, including the shape-shifting one, and that is how the mouse/goat/raven she calls "Pook" joins her entourage. Grayling also befriends the ancient weather witch Auld Nancy, the "troublous" runny-nosed Pansy, the alluring enchantress Desdemona Cork and the gnarled fortuneteller Sylvanus Vetch who sees the future via... cheese. Readers will revel in Cushman's atmospheric, witty tale of Grayling's risky and rambling rescue mission across the countryside that ultimately transforms her from a cowed, timid girl to a healer and leader who discovers her own powers. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness