Isabelle has always felt as though she doesn’t belong; she knows that other kids think that she’s strange. For this reason, she is not too upset when one day she opens a door in the nurse’s office and inexplicably falls into another world.

The world Isabelle falls into appears to have a witch; the children she meets are hiding in the woods to avoid being eaten by her. Isabelle thinks that the witch sounds interesting, so she heads in the opposite direction of the children to find her. On the way, Isabelle meets a girl named Hen who has gotten separated from her siblings. They soon come upon an elderly healer named Grete, who sees that they need help and invites them to stay with her. Isabelle is happy where she is and has no desire to return to her normal life—plus, how would she even get back?

I liked this story; Isabelle is a great narrator and a sympathetic character. I didn’t think she was “strange” or “weird”—rather, I think the other kids at her school were the uninteresting ones! For those who enjoyed this book, recommend Now You See It— (Vande Velde) or The Great Good Thing (Townley), as both of these have regular girls being thrust into new worlds unexpectedly.