THE STOLEN SONGBIRD

A young girl, a pet rabbit, a best friend, a postwar London setting, and a puzzling mystery animate and entertain in Eagle’s latest.

Caro Monday, 12, lives in London with her mother, Jacinta, who’s famous for her whistling, and her second mum, Jacinta’s partner, Veronica “Ronnie” Rudd, who owns the pub where they live. Caro is happy. She has her white-and-ginger rabbit, His Nibs; her best friend, Horace Braithwaite, who aspires to be the next Yves Saint Laurent; and the Rubbles, an abandoned area that’s “half bomb site, half junkyard, full of stuff to build with, and no grown-ups to bother you.” The two are outsiders—white-presenting Caro for having two mums and Horace for being Black and Bajan. But when Jacinta fails to return from an overseas whistling tour (not the first time she’s gone missing) and Ronnie’s sister up north needs help, Caro ends up staying with the detested Gam, or Great-Aunt Mary, who raised Jacinta until she ran away at 16. Arriving at Gam’s house with her few possessions, Caro finds the imperious Gam as awful as she’d imagined. While unpacking, Caro discovers a small painting of a bird hidden in Mum’s old suitcase—a painting that turns out to be by an old master, and stolen to boot. 1950s London comes to life in the evocative descriptions and Rioux’s utterly charming, full-page illustrations. The twisty plot and taut, assured writing deliver a story that immediately engages.

Assured and atmospheric: a winner.