How to Heal a Gryphon (Giada the Healer #1)

In this Amalfi Coast–set adventure steeped in Italian culture and folklore, Cannistra (The Trouble with Shooting Stars) introduces readers to a stubborn heroine determined to embrace her true strengths. Giada Bellantuono, nearly 13, is in training to become a guaritrice—an Italian witch specializing in the art of magical healing. But unlike the rest of her renowned streghe family, Giada doesn’t want to serve the god Apollo and heal people, nor undertake a looming apprenticeship. Instead, she feels drawn to Diana, goddess of wild animals, and to healing creatures “ordinary and extraordinary,” like the baby gryphon she finds. When Giada spills salt and olive oil, and wishes that her esteemed 16-year-old brother Rocco would disappear, he is kidnapped by the Streghe del Malocchio—witches who can “sniff out a person’s bad luck.” To rescue him, Giada and her new feline familiar, black cat Sinistro, must journey to Malafi, the witches’ underground city, and accomplish an impossible task. Via a world where magic and modern medicine coexist, and a secret spell-casting community lives undetected year-round, Cannistra writes a compassionate quest that interrogates tradition, legacy, and humans’ effect on the natural world. Ages 8–12. Agent: Suzie Townsend, New Leaf Literary. (Oct.)