Starred Review Two sisters awaken in a forest cottage to find their parents gone, the secret inside their closet breached, and nothing but a mysterious pictograph to point them forward. Summer and Bird set out into the woods to reunite their family but soon become separated. Alone, each must brave the forest's hard beauty, exploring its mysterious corners to search for each other, and for themselves. Catmull's stunning debut unleashes a fierce imagination to build a wholly original world, rich with the familiar shimmer of folklore and drawn with the elegance of a Russian ballet. There are rhymes and bird songs; ravens and snakes; a spirit guide with a vexing smile, born of a burning tree; and an evil, bird-eating puppeteer. And what of the avian-selkie Swan Queen, with her stolen cloak of feathers and feet of clay? As a piece of fantasy, this atmospheric adventure thrills with complex storytelling, carefully threaded with bits of foreshadowing and overflowing with poignant imagery. But lurking beneath the girls' parallel journeys and heartbreaking reconciliation is an allegorical exploration of family, where the obscure difficulties and rewards of sibling loyalty and parental devotion become painfully, startlingly clear.

A haunting fable inflected with mythological and fairy-tale motifs finds two sisters abandoned by their parents in conflict with each other. Summer, 12, and Bird, 9, live an idyllic life with their ornithologist father, their mother and their cat. When they wake one morning to find parents and cat gone, there is just an enigmatic "picture letter" from their mother left behind. Into the woods they go to find them, their fright exacerbating the resentments that normally exist between sisters. Bird finds the way into Down, a place of magic, and Summer follows, but soon they are tragically separated, and each must blunder along on her own. Their mother, it turns out, is queen of the birds, in human form since their father stole her swan robe. The evil Puppeteer craves her power, to have bird language and wings, and she cozens Bird into her service, White Witch–like. The girls' physical journeys are metaphors for their emotional ones, the helpers and adversaries they meet as strange and as complicated as their psyches. The author balances this meticulous, symbol-rich narrative with a light, storyteller's voice, posing questions that readers must answer for themselves. At its heart, it is a story of love and imperfection, and of the necessity of embracing both. "The way a story is told has power," the narrator asserts; Catmull's languorously beautiful telling is puissant indeed. (Fantasy. 10-14)

Fairy-tale imagery meets allegory in this charming fantasy. Sisters Summer and Bird discover their parents have disappeared overnight, and a clue leads them into the nearby forest--and then into the ravaged bird-populated world of Down. Separated, they must find their parents, vanquish the voracious fowl-eating Puppeteer, and save the birds. Despite lovely language, a listless pace will lose many readers.

A haunting fable inflected with mythological and fairy-tale motifs finds two sisters abandoned by their parents in conflict with each other. Summer, 12, and Bird, 9, live an idyllic life with their ornithologist father, their mother and their cat. When they wake one morning to find parents and cat gone, there is just an enigmatic "picture letter" from their mother left behind. Into the woods they go to find them, their fright exacerbating the resentments that normally exist between sisters. Bird finds the way into Down, a place of magic, and Summer follows, but soon they are tragically separated, and each must blunder along on her own. Their mother, it turns out, is queen of the birds, in human form since their father stole her swan robe. The evil Puppeteer craves her power, to have bird language and wings, and she cozens Bird into her service, White Witch–like. The girls' physical journeys are metaphors for their emotional ones, the helpers and adversaries they meet as strange and as complicated as their psyches. The author balances this meticulous, symbol-rich narrative with a light, storyteller's voice, posing questions that readers must answer for themselves. At its heart, it is a story of love and imperfection, and of the necessity of embracing both. "The way a story is told has power," the narrator asserts; Catmull's languorously beautiful telling is puissant indeed. (Fantasy. 10-14)

After a bewildering day that begins with 12-year-old Summer following the trail of her vanished parents and ends at a bonfire in the forest with Bird, her nine-year-old sister, Summer wakes to find Bird has also abandoned her to follow a path "just for me." There is only the mysterious, elderly Ben for company, along with hints that birds hold the key-sometimes literally-to Summer's questions. Ben's kindhearted but murky guidance (" -It might mean just exactly that,' said Ben. -But it might also mean more than that' ") doesn't last long, and then there are no reliable adults, no clear roads to follow as Summer struggles to piece together who she is now that the people who defined her are gone. With a fairy tale-tinged sadness reminiscent of Anne Ursu's Breadcrumbs, Catmull's debut is a melancholy quest fantasy with no trophy at the end; instead, Summer finds the most somber of adult realities. The book's greatest strength lies in Catmull's ability to articulate the disorientation and sense of injustice that accompany loss. Ages 10-up. Agent: David Dunton, Harvey Klinger. (Oct.)