The Cloud Mender (Ages 8–12)

Four years without rain have turned Chalkwell to white dust, and ten-year-old Tilda Somers has filled a notebook with one hundred and six clouds that promised everything and gave nothing. Then the sky tears open above the old chalk quarry and drops a boy made of mist, a mender who sews shut the rips that weather makes — and whose spool of thread is empty. To bring the rain home, Tilda must climb a staircase of cloud carrying only one thing she loves.