The Night Fair (Ages 8–12)

Tilly Wells is allergic to sunlight — twenty minutes of daylight means welts, fever, and a hospital bay — so she lives on the other side of the clock, inventing her own constellations in a notebook nobody reads. Marigold Creek worships the sun, and its whole summer festival proves it. Then Tilly discovers a boarded-up observatory with a hand-cranked star machine inside, and learns the town plans to bulldoze the ridge by autumn. Saving it will mean stepping into the light.