By Shannon Messenger
A twelve-year-old who can read minds discovers she isn't human at all, and is whisked away to a hidden world of elves where someone very much wants her gone.
Sophie Foster has been able to hear other people's thoughts since she was five, which has made ordinary life a lonely, confusing thing. Then a boy named Fitz tells her the truth: she isn't human, she's an elf, and there's a whole hidden elvin world she was born to. Sophie leaves the only family she's known and starts over at Foxfire, an elite academy where everyone has powers and everyone seems to know more about her past than she does. Someone set the wildfires burning in the human world, someone is very interested in Sophie, and the deeper she digs into who she really is, the more dangerous the answers get.
If your child wants to move into a series and stay there, this is a whole address to live at, the run of books is long and getting longer, and each one is a doorstop. It scratches the hidden-magic-school itch, but it's really a slow-burn mystery about identity: who Sophie is, why her memories have gaps, who's protecting her and who isn't. Sophie is a smart, out-of-place heroine who has to build a new life and a new self from scratch, which is catnip for a reader ready to sink in deep. Fall for book one and there's a mountain of pages waiting.