Perfect for fans of Doll Bones and Coraline , this eerie, spine-tingling fantasy follows a girl who discovers two otherworldly children and finds herself trapped in an ancient bargain that threatens to destroy them all. It is the autumn of 1160, and twelve-year-old Agnes is helping with the harvest when she hears a frightened voice calling from the nearby woods. When she goes to investigate, Agnes can’t believe what she sees. There, at the bottom of the deep wolf traps, are two children. They are shouting in a language no one understands—and their skin is green. Agnes soon discovers that these are no ordinary children; in fact, they aren’t even human. They are of the Fair Folk, and they are here to take Agnes home to their world. Trusting that the Fair Folk cannot lie, Agnes agrees to venture underground. But she soon learns just how dangerous their world is—and what it will take to break the ancient bargain meant to keep her there. “Agnes’s voice is precise, distinctive, and very beautiful, and her penchant for dreaminess underlines her difference from the other villagers—a quality that makes her vulnerable to Senna’s enticing lies. Senna is a sharp, survivalist foil for dreamy, good-hearted Agnes, and her history as a victim of brutal imperial conquest garners readerly sympathy even as she attempts to assume Agnes’ identity. . . . Agnes’ secure love for her family and her belief in the life-shaping power of stories bind this bittersweet book together. As Agnes says, ‘There should be more stories where girls help one another.’” -- BCCB “There are multiple plot twists, alternating narrative voices (Senna, the girl Agnes replaces in the underground fairy world, has her own tale to tell), and frequent surprises due to the shifting illusions devised by the fairy folk. Through it all, Coats’s story maintains its strong central theme: Agnes’s determination to become the hero of a story—one that turns out to feature two girls helping each other.” -- The Horn Book “Fraught with excitement and peril. Coats skillfully weaves in facts about the Fair Folk, Agnes’s parents, and the coming of the Romans to Britain in this tale that hearkens back to a medieval story first recorded by monks." -- School Library Journal J. Anderson Coats has master’s degrees in history and library science and has published short stories in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. She is the author of the acclaimed novels The Wicked and the Just , The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming , R Is for Rebel , The Green Children of Woolpit , and The Night Ride , as well as A Season Most Unfair and The Unexpected Lives of Ordinary Girls . She lives with her family in Washington State. Visit her at JAndersonCoats.com. The Green Children of Woolpit Today’s not the day to get lost in a story, Agnes Walter. Everything feels like a story today, though. It’s hot in this wheat field, which makes me think of deep, cool wells and the saints who look after them, or a delicious patch of shade and the shadows that play there, or the first snow of the year that brings all the kids in Woolpit outside to make tracks everywhere so Those Good People can’t tell whose house is whose, at least for a while. There are a thousand stories I could tell, but if you are a grown-up, now is never the right time for such things. My da is working ahead of me, swinging his scythe, shush-shush, cutting close to the base of the stalks so nothing is wasted. I follow him, stoop and gather, stoop and gather, stoop?—?ooooh, look at those thin slivers of wind chasing past like tiny threads of silver among the husks of wheat. I don’t talk about how pretty the wind is anymore. Not since Kate and Tabby started oinking at me and reminding anyone who’d listen that pigs are the only animals that can see the wind. A cry rises somewhere distant. At first I’m sure it’s a bird, but it keeps spinning up and falling like a baby’s yowl but also like a dog that’s gotten its tail caught in a door. Birds don’t make that kind of sound, nor do beasts. Not even wolves. I trail to a halt and listen hard?—?not stooping, not gathering, not watching the wind?—?even though I’ve been warned twice already that there’s to be no shirking. No foot-dragging. Today’s not the day to get lost in a story, my da keeps saying, and the Woolpit mas have even less patience for stories than anything else, especially when my jammed-up words make everything I say sound like a falsehood. I’ll ask Glory. She’s the best dog namer, straw braider, and butterfly chaser in Woolpit, and good at helping me stay in the here-and-now. She can’t still be angry about what happened at the Maying. That was months ago, and I’ve begged her pardon and she gave it and surely she’ll soon feel like making flower crowns again instead of always having a chore to do somewhere away from me. I gather in a rush, leaving behind big swaths of cut wheat stalks, so I reach the top of the row when she does. I tug her sleeve