11-year-old Carly Bean Bitters suffers a peculiar malady:
she can only sleep by the light of day, and
is awake through the night,
spending her time up in the attic of her aunt’s house, awaiting the arrival of
the dawn.
One night, she notes a strange squash that appears on her
roof. Investigating, she comes across Lewis, a fiddle-playing rat. Lewis tells
Carly the squash is a replacement for one of the rats in the group who has been
abducted by owls.
He goes on to explain that until recently, the owls join
with the rats dancing in the moonlight within the Whistle Root woods to the
music played by Lewis and has band. But then something changed, and instead of
dancing with the rats, the owls took to abducting them.
Grabbed by an owl herself, Carly find herself dropped into
the woods where she meets the once happy community of rats, now gravely
threatened by the hostile owls. At school, and struggling to stay awake, she
also finds a strange note warning that the “Moon Child” is in danger.
Enlisting the help of another strange child, Green, who
spend his time hiding under the library, Carly sets out to solve the riddle of
the “Moon Child” and the reason for the owls’ change in behaviour – and along
the way, discovers something unexpected about herself.
Join Faerie Maven-Pralou as she reads Christopher Pennell’s
2010 debut novel, live in voice.
(Text courtesy of Inara Pey)
Step into the mysterious woods of Whistle Root and feel the
magic. A little girl who can only sleep during the day grows from something of
an isolated town oddity to the heiress of an ancient legacy of magic and music.
