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The summer I was twelve, my best friend Grace pedalled furiously to my house on her bike, balancing something on her handlebars. There's something you gotta see, gotta read! she said.

It was this book.

The first time I picked up Fablehaven was June 1, 2010—almost exactly 10 years ago today. Grace and I were wrapping up seventh grade at separate elementary schools, both daunted and excited about the prospect of starting high school in the fall (in Vancouver, high school begins in eighth grade; we don't have middle schools or junior highs).

We were almost exactly the same age as Kendra, and it was also around the same time—summertime—that this book took place. And the escape of Fablehaven was exactly what we craved: immersion in a wholly novel and lush world, just close enough to our own realities for us to devise stories and games about spectacular creatures and secret missives. Grace and I were lifelong best friends, and our shared marvel at this world only cemented that.

“In their youth, mortals behave more like nymphs. Adulthood seems impossibly distant...��

Today, Grace is interning at Google, alternating between California and BC. I'm starting my Master's at the University of Toronto in September. It's been a long time since I've visited the world of Kendra and Seth's Fablehaven—a world of satyrs, demons, fairies, ogresses, witches, and spectral entities—and it still manages to snatch my breath away. I'm more appreciative now than when I was at age twelve of Brandon Mull's brilliant pacing, each chapter building on the last, adventures and encounters with new creatures flowing one into the other.

And I continue to be utterly enchanted by the magic within these pages.