This book was brilliant. The story is magical and heartwarming and explored themes of found-family and belonging, through some wonderful characters. Overall, a very original take on the Arthurian legend. Thank you to the publisher for sending me a proof copy of this book.

This is a beautiful story that will touch your heart especially if you know or have been part of the care system at all. It has the ability to lift the reader into the realms of “possibility” & that there is always something there that can take you away from the everyday. The reader has good insight and it was easy to imagine that “anyone” could find a cairn or a special place - it was heartwarming to go on the journey with the friends & I wanted to get to the next page quickly as I wanted to know the whole story. It was well written and easy to follow and to get to know the characters of the children and I loved how the story flowed. A really enjoyable tale. I look forward to reading the sequel

How do you find your home, when you keep being kicked out of it? Is it possible that you have a true quest in life when you are unwanted, abandoned, or alone? That is the question in the back of the minds of all of the children in Fablehouse, a foster home for the Brown Babies in Britain in the 1950s. The product of Black American GI’s fraternizing with women throughout Britain in WWII, the Brown Babies were often segregated and looked down upon due to the color of their skin. E.L. Norry’s FABLEHOUSE (Bloomsbury, 2023) features a cast of these Brown Babies in the English countryside. Norry draws on her own experience growing up mixed-race, both Welsh and Jewish, and never quite feeling that she fit in anywhere. She brings her own history and experience and melds them with the Arthurian legend and folkloric tradition of Wales to create a compelling and deeply earnest plot for children as well as the young at heart. Heather doesn’t believe that she’ll ever find a place she fits in. Ms. Isolde, and the children of Fablehouse, seek to prove her wrong. Everyone there has a story of the tragedy that brought them to the foster home. Lloyd’s grandfather lost custody of him after his dementia began to progress, Arlene still believes her mum will one day return from Hollywood to pick her up, and Nat thinks every man who visits might be his missing father. Maybe the other children aren’t that different to Heather - but it takes a bit of magic for her to realize that. When a mysterious man shows up at the nearby cairn in the wilderness, there is a single question on all the kid’s minds. Is he, Pal, actually a black knight? The book of Arthurian legends that Heather has been reading certainly makes him seem familiar, but none of the illustrations look quite like him. Yet he talks about the threat that the fairies pose to Fablehouse, and the rest of the world. This ragtag group of children need to band together, with the help of their knight, and save themselves and the place that indeed is their home. Fablehouse is an incredibly moving book. There’s a lot of power in being able to see yourself in characters, and a surprisingly small amount of children’s literature that deals with mixed-race orphans. The earnest sincerity of the storytelling, and the connection to Arthurian tradition gives the story a timeless feel that will enable it to remain relevant for ages to come. Fablehouse is well worth a read, and I eagerly await its sequel in 2024. Don’t miss this series!

I absolutely loved Fablehouse, the forthcoming middle grade fantasy novel by E.L Norry, kicking off a series of remixed Arthurian tales. A beautiful story of found and chosen family that follows a group of children as they try to save their home, a residential care home, when its residents stumble into the clutches of the sinister Fae. It's 1954. Fablehouse is Heather’s latest home, a crumbling mansion surrounded by lakes and cliffs and a very strange cairn on the hillside. Here she meets Pal, the Black Knight who has been guarding the doorway from the Fae Feld to her world. But soon, everything goes wrong. The cairn collapses, Pal feels terribly strange, and things start to go wrong; the fae arrive. I loved the interweaving of the stories of Palamedes and Isolde and King Mark of the fae with the true historical setting of a residential home for the Brown Babies, children born postwar to white women and black GIs - based on a very real place called Holnicote House. I loved the gang of kids — Heather, Nat, Arlene and Lloyd, the Roamers — fiercely defensive and loyal to each other and their home, brave to no end. In all the best ways, this feels like classic children's literature - the sort of book that I know will be on shelves for years and years to come. And I am so looking forward to the second book out next year!! Fablehouse is out a week after Vivi and I think they share so much of the great stuff — Arthuriana, friendship against all odds, kids that society says are too different, and a whole load of magic. Definitely check it out.

A spellbinding adventure, action packed, full of heart and a new twist on Arthurian lore.