Book Heaven Wednesday Presents Maya's Magical Adventures by Father/Dau
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  • N. N. Light
    • Oct 31, 2018
    • 4 min read

Book Heaven Wednesday Presents Maya's Magical Adventures by Father/Daughter Writing Team Malcolm


Title

Maya’s Magical Adventures

Author

Malcolm McCoard

Genre

Young Adult, Fantasy, Comedy

Book Blurb

2017 Purple Dragonfly International award winner in the 'Young adults' category. Like nothing you've read before! A fast moving, laugh-out-loud magical comedy and fantasy adventure that will keep your "heart thumping like a bongo drum strapped to the back of a runaway camel!".

Join Maya a young Scottish girl and her know-it-all talking cat Mischief, her living wand Spell and dragon Blink on a series of magical adventures and mishaps as she discovers her magical powers and their hilarious pitfalls.

Find out what lies behind the forbidden door. Solve a series of strange riddles and journey across Ayrshire and Arran landmarks in search of clues. How will each of her friends meet with their inevitable sticky end? Can she figure out who the mysterious shadow is and how to defeat it? Is Aunty Dot really that shallow and can Maya really trust her? Or is she destined to be lost in the strange nightmare of the mirror maze?

There's only one way to find out, read it! Failure to do so may lead to feelings of disappointment, delusions of sanity and the loss of a potentially right good giggle!

NN Light's review: “Maya’s Magical Adventures is an award-winning fantasy any reader will enjoy. It reminds me of A Wrinkle in Time meets The Chronicles of Narnia. Maya is a strong heroine with lots to learn along the way. Mischief, the talking cat, is hilarious and brings lightness to the dialogue. Well-written with unexpected twists and turns, this is a must-read for any fantasy reader! Is this a series? I sure hope so. My Rating: 5 stars”

Excerpt

“Blue…, get after her!” Maya shouted. With a loud crash, an over-enthusiastic broomstick whisked Maya and Mischief into the air.

“Really!” complained the cat. “Most witchlings open the door first!”

“Oops, sorry…, but how do you steer this thing?” Maya shouted in panic, hanging on desperately.

“Hmmm…, difficult one…, I’d say lean forwards for backwards, backwards for forwards, up for down, down for up…, or at a push..,” Mischief paused for effect.

“At a push what?” screamed Maya, in frustration and terror.

“At a push, turn around and face the way you’re going, silly girl?” scolded the cat.

“Oh,” blushed Maya shuffling around to face forwards. It wasn’t long though, before Maya and Blue were as one, twisting this way and that, soaring upwards to drag outstretched hands through the clouds and plunging down and skimming across the tree tops.

Skye and Maya giggled and screamed as they zig zagged through the tallest trees, swooped over hills and plunged through valleys playing witches tag. After a while, the brushes started to slow and pant. The young witchlings reined them back to a hover to let the brushes rest for a while.

“Watch me!” cried Skye, climbing out of her seated position, through a wobbly crouch and onto unstable feet. With a big grin she started edging slowly along the brush, arms outstretched. She swayed and tottered her way right to the end of her brush, like a circus high wire act, but considerably less steady. “Ta-dah!” she announced proudly.

Out of nowhere a dark shadow fell and an icy chill filled the air. Maya shuddered. Her mum described the feeling as, “someone walking over your grave,” but Maya thought this was more like someone digging up your coffin, prizing it open and playing the xylophone on your ribs with your own thigh bones. She was spooked.

“Watch out!” cried Mischief, but it was too late.

Distracted by her antics and the icy shadow, Skye’s brush had crossed over the path of the running waters of the river Doon beneath them. In that instant, the magic was lost and down, down, down she tumbled, squealing like a sunburned pig that fell on a hedgehog and landed in a nettle patch.

“What do I do?” Maya shouted in desperation.

“Magic of course!” scoffed Mischief. “A spell and quickly, or pray for a soft landing.”

“Something soft and quick, eh,…, er? Jelly… Jelly!” Maya shouted.

“Really?” enquired her incredulous cat.

Skye screamed.

Maya screamed.

Mischief drew a pair of furry paws up to his face to cover his eyes.

Splat! Skye hit the river…, and the river turned a horrible crimson red.

Maya peered through her fingers, tears welling in her eyes. “No! No! She’s not….?” Maya couldn’t say the word.

Maya stared down through tear-filled eyes as Skye’s body bobbed face down to the surface of the red river running below them.

A river of what had now been transformed into red strawberry jelly!

“Yuk!” cried Skye.

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Author Biography

The ‘accidental’ debut author Malcolm McCoard, an engineer from Ayrshire has based the book upon bedtime stories created for and the subsequent illustrations of his daughter Maya, who insisted, “You need to write that down daddy!”

He is now working on the third book in the Maya’s Magical Adventures series and has also published a rhyming picture book; The six lives of Henry the Eighth, about the misadventures of surely the world’s most unlucky cat.

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