Wintersmith
by Terry Pratchett
Young adult · ages 10–14 · grades 5–9 · 920L · 406 pages · 2009
Why we'd hand it over
Pratchett's most emotionally grounded Discworld novel—Tiffany's choice to refuse supernatural temptation in favor of her own calling lands harder than any romance, and the prose does real work making fairyland both beautiful and genuinely unsettling.