The feral child

Gripping, mystical and adventurous, young readers will be as hooked as Maddy was the minute she set foot inside that creepy as hell old castle, Irish World said of The Feral Child. Maddy, an orphan, is sick of her Irish town, and sick of her cousin Danny, one of the nastiest people you could meet. Mad as hell one evening, she crawls inside the grounds of the castle, the one place she has always been forbidden to go.

Once inside, she is chased by a strange feral boy, who she suspects is one of the faerie: cruel, fantastical people who live among humans and exchange local children for their own. When the boy returns to steal her neighbor Stephen into his world, Maddy and her cousins set off on a terrifying journey into a magical wilderness, determined to bring him back home. To do so, they must face an evil as old as the earth itself.

Che Golden has created a gripping adventure that interweaves Maddy's modern Irish experience with the vivid fantasy of the region's ancient folklore. Readers will enjoy the frank and bold heroine of Maddy, and will be dazzled by The Feral Child 's evocative rendering of Irish folklore and richly imagined alternate worlds. From the Hardcover edition.