Congratulations Jenni on your mystifying middle-grade debut, The Vanishing Trick, being announced as May’s Waterstones Children’s Book of the Month!
This comes off the back of the brilliant news of the book being also picked as The Sunday Times’ ‘Children’s Book of the Week’, editor Nicolette Jones stated:
This debut novel, which reads like a fairy tale with a Victorian setting, features a fascinating villain, Madame Pinchbeck, who has supernatural powers to imprison stolen children and is a charlatan who holds seances to trick people about their departed loved ones. Sustaining these two traits in one character – spell casting and fake spirituality – requires skill. It should not work that the baddie is both a fraud and an actual magician, yet Spangler makes us believe. She conjures up an eventful gothic adventure full of secrets and surprises, based on the relationship between three lost children whom pinchbeck has captured and their perilous struggle to escape. Despite the chilling central character, this is a touching story about love and loyalty.