DarkIsle - D. A Nelson

Winner of the 2008 Scottish Book Awards. By turns thrilling and funny, DarkIsle is a vivid and fast-paced novel of captivating originality. Ten-year-old Morag is being held prisoner. When a dodo and a rat accidentally rescue her, she is drawn into their dangerous and life-threatening mission to retrieve an ancient stone used to protect their northern homeland. Taken by a renegade intent on harnessing its powers to a forbidding island somewhere off the coast, the three must find the one who can take them there. Morag's journey is perilous and dark forces are already afoot to stop her. Along the way she finds clues not only to the stone's whereabouts but also to the disappearance of her parents ten years before. The 1st book in the DarkIsle trilogy.