Cosima Unfortunate Steals a Star

In Victorian London, Cosima aka Cos, Diya, Mary and Pearl live in a home for disabled girls. The home is run by the disreputable and cruel Stains – Alvira Stain and Eustace Stain. They have been embezzling money meant for the girls’ care. When the mysterious and malevolent Lord Fitzroy visits the Stains and says that he would like to adopt all the residents of the home, Cosima suspects foul play. Can she and the other girls prove what is really going on and can Cosima finally find her long lost family?

If you are physically disabled or know a physically disabled child, this book will affirm their self-belief like very few others. Noakes does not hide the girls’ conditions or the effect they have on them but the girls are fully rounded and capable. This is one of the few books in which there is a wheelchair-using character who is mentally capable and also sarcastic. Noakes’s comments through Diya about the British Empire and Britain’s colonisation of many countries are on point and will feed well into the current debate on migration.

Usually, in middle grade fiction, you will find either social commentary on issues like disability or a well-crafted, believable fantasy landscape. In Noakes’s almost flawless work, you find both. We need more from this author as quickly as possible.