By Jordan Quinn
A lonely young prince and the seamstress's daughter go island-hopping across a fairy-tale kingdom to find the queen's lost emerald, and become best friends doing it.
Prince Lucas lives in a castle and has almost no one to play with, until he meets Clara, the seamstress's daughter, who knows every corner of the kingdom of Wrenly. When Queen Tasha's emerald pendant goes missing, the two of them get permission to go looking for it, and their hunt takes them to the island of fairies, the island of trolls, the island of dragons, the wizards' island, and a mermaid's cove. It's a treasure hunt and a friendship starting up at the same time, and every stop is a new corner of a bright, made-up world.
This is the gentlest possible on-ramp for a child who just finished a beloved series and wants that fairy-tale-adventure feeling again in something they can read on their own. The words are easy, there's a picture on nearly every page to carry them along, and the chapters are short enough to feel like real progress. Best of all it's book one of a long series, so if your child clicks with Wrenly, there's a whole stack behind it, exactly the thing to fill the hole a finished favorite leaves.