The Royal Woods

All it takes is one look — one look for 12-year-old Sydney and her nine-year-old brother Turk to know that everything had changed. The farm where their Uncle Frank and Aunt Lily used to live was gone, and along with it, their dreams of a happy ever-after.

Now what? With their mother dead and their father buried under his grief, Sydney and Turk decided to hop a freight train and go west. The farm was their destination, but in its place is a strange new subdivision: The Royal Woods.

Rather than return home and admit defeat, Sydney and Turk embark on the adventure of a lifetime. With a homeless eccentric and an illegal immigrant as their only friends — and some neighborhood bullies making things a little difficult — the pair struggle to make a life for themselves in their odd new surroundings.

The Royal Woods is an often fantastical, always engaging yarn that turns more than a few fairy tale conventions on their heads. Writing with a wink and a nod to Frank L. Baum's The Wizard of Oz and movies like Big Fish, Matt Duggan offers a smart, page-turning tale for young adult readers.