Abarat

Candy Quackenbush, a sixteen-year-old girl, is bored with her life and is desperate for something new. She lives in Chickentown, Minnesota, has a drunkard father, and is often made fun of by other kids. One day at school, a strange image enters her head, and she draws it in a textbook. When her teacher notices, she is furious, and Candy has the sudden impulse to simply walk out of school. She wanders around town before coming to a vast field with an old lighthouse, and wonders why there would be a lighthouse where there is no sea for thousands of miles. She soon has her answer. Candy is thrust into the Abarat, a fantastic archipelago of twenty-five islands: one for each hour of the day, plus one extra: the mysterious Time Out of Time. Candy feels as if this place is familiar to her, and makes many friends, but all is not well: Christopher Carrion, Prince of Midnight, is pursuing her. Candy must find her place in this strange new world.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fantasy, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.