Nieve

The first in a projected trilogy of novels, Nieve is the long-awaited new work for young adults by the award-winning author of the Cat’s Eye Corner trilogy. Business has never been better for Nieve’s parents, professional weepers, but despite the perks – better desserts, a new lime green T-shirt – even Nieve wonders why so many more people seem unhappy. Then there are the signs that she can’t ignore that they are coming. There’s the dark fry which have taken over her back pond, moving as if following a single thought, the spiders which come to cover everything, right down to her toothbrush, the black weeds which strangle all colour out of the garden. And why has everyone become so forgetful? When two strangers,Wormius and Ashe, come to town trailing a perpetual gloom behind them, and then people, including Nieve’s best friend Malcolm, go missing, it falls to Nieve and a couple of unusual companions to try and save them. Their adventures take them to the Black City and back again where Nieve discovers that even she is not exactly as she seems. In the tradition of Neil Gaiman and Madeleine L’Engle, Terry Griggs’s Nieve, fabulously illustrated by Alexander Griggs-Burr, introduces a charming and adventurous new heroine and a fantastical world that may well seem all too real.

Like a roller coaster, Griggs is well worth the price of admission, the wobbly legs, the dizziness. – The Globe & Mail

The parade of fabulously strange characters … will remind readers of The Wizard of Oz and Harry Potter, as well as Phantom Tollbooth, but the real spirit of the book lies in Griggs’ delightful twists and turns of the language itself.” – Booklist

Clever and entertaining wordplay, with echoes of Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth, enhances this fast-paced story. Sophisticated fantasy readers will enjoy this fully created world. – School Library Journal.