Momo Arashima Steals the Sword of the Wind

A thrilling, funny middle-grade fantasy series about a girl who sets out to save her Shinto goddess mother-and the world-by facing down demons intent on bringing chaos. Perfect for fans of the Aru Shah and Fablehaven series.

All Momo wants for her twelfth birthday is an ordinary life-like everyone else's. At home, she has to take care of her absentminded widowed mother. At school, kids ridicule her for mixing up reality with the magical stories her mother used to tell her.

But then Momo's mother falls gravely ill, and a death hag straight out of those childhood stories attacks Momo at the mall, where she's rescued by a talking fox . . . and "ordinary" goes out the window. It turns out that Momo's mother is a banished Shinto goddess who used to protect a long-forgotten passageway to Yomi-a.k.a. the land of the dead. That passageway is now under attack, and countless evil spirits threaten to escape and wreak havoc across the earth.

Joined by Niko the fox and Danny-her former best friend turned popular jerk, whom she never planned to speak to again, much less save the world with-Momo must embrace her (definitely not "ordinary") identity as half human, half goddess to unlock her divine powers, save her mother's life, and force the demons back to Yomi.

"Momo Arashima may be #71 on mean-girl Kiki Weldon's list of popular seventh graders, but she's #1 in the kami-verse! This wild ride of a novel is simultaneously a hilarious adventure and a meditation on fear, anger, bravery, friendship, and the ties of family and love." -Sayantani DasGupta, New York Times bestselling author of the Kingdom Beyond series