Flint Heart

There's a stone that turns hearts to flint. That's the premise, and it works like a charm. When Charles and Unity's father becomes the flint heart's latest victim, the children must venture into fairyland to break its curse. What follows is a wildly inventive quest populated by a talking hot water bottle with a wound, the irascible king of fairyland, and the enigmatic Zagabog. Phillpotts understands that the best children's fantasy doesn't shrink from darkness: the stone corrupts absolutely, and defeating it requires real courage from characters young enough to still believe in magic. The droll narration never talks down to its readers, finding room for both genuine peril and absurdist humor in equal measure. The book endures because it treats its young audience as capable of understanding that evil is real, that love can be tested, and that sometimes the oldest magic yields to the simplest courage.