Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods

Valente’s middle-grade and YA-adjacent work is always overflowing with language, invention, and delicious strangeness, and this book is no exception. The Eightpenny Woods feels handcrafted out of folklore, nonsense, and dream-logic, but with real emotional stakes underneath the whimsy. Valente writes as if language itself were a toybox. The result is imaginative, odd, and full of delight for readers who enjoy fairy tales with bite and brains. A wonderfully strange adventure.