I’m hoping that you can help me, I’ve been up for hours googling all the details I can remember about a book that I read and loved in 7th grade. I read this book in 2013 and I believe it was a fairly new book that the time. It may have had a second book in the series but I don’t know for sure.
I recall that the main character was a middle school or perhaps elementary school boy. I think I remember him going into a suspicious shop and noticing something odd about a mirror. Somehow he becomes in possession of this mirror.
He discovers that the mirror is a portal that he can crawl through to get to another world. In this world I recall a forest, and maybe a fairy-like companion. In this world there is some sort of crisis taking place. I recall several instances of the boy narrowly escaping the mirror after being chased by some kind of monster. I think the boy kept the mirror in his closet.
I can almost picture the cover of the book too. I can see lots of purple and black, and maybe some swirling style designs around the perimeter. And an illustration of the boy crouching looking into the mirror.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
‘Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact’ by A J Hartley?
“Eleven-year-old Darwen Arkwright has spent his whole life in a tiny town in England. So when he is forced to move to Atlanta, Georgia, to live with his aunt, he knows things will be different – but what he finds there is beyond even his wildest imaginings! Darwen discovers an enchanting world through the old mirror hanging in his closet – a world that holds as many dangers as it does wonders. Scrobblers on motorbikes with nets big enough to fit a human boy. Gnashers with no eyes, but monstrous mouths full of teeth. Flittercrakes with bat-like bodies and the faces of men. Along with his new friends Rich and Alexandra, Darwen becomes entangled in an adventure and a mystery that involves the safety of his entire school. They soon realize that the creatures are after something in our world – something that only human children possess.”
I may be looking for the same book. My son read it probably in 2019 when he was in fourth grade. My recollection is that the mirror was kept in a turrent in an old house that the boy recently moved to with his father and stepmother (not sure if he had siblings). The stepmother owned an herbalist shop or apothecary in town. I don’t believe the book was “Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact” by AJ Hartley as suggested by Gill but that book looks fantastic too!