A sweet, otherworldly tale that’s billed as “the fantastic adventure that first inspired Hayao Miyazaki’s beloved film, Spirited Away,” The Village Beyond the Mist is sure to charm. Set in a magical town hidden in a mysterious forest clearing, The Village Beyond the Mist is a delightful, multigenerational fantasy for middle grade readers about service.

Is that an oxymoron?

Not at all.

In The Village Beyond the Mist, Lina Uesugi–like her father before her–visits Misty Valley one summer vacation. Unbeknownst to her at the start of her journey, a white umbrella with red polka dots and a handle in the shape of a clown face guides her steps. There, she meets Ms. Pippity Picotto, the cranky old woman who runs Picotto Hall, a boarding home for an odd assortment of lodgers including John (who cooks), a golden-furred cat named Gentleman, Kinu-san (who cleans and does laundry), and a kindly inventor named Icchan.

Lina doesn’t know what to expect over the summer, as her father had only mentioned that she would be going “someplace different.” When she arrives at Picotto Hall, her blunt landlady (who Icchan says, “enjoys needling people”) tells her:

“Misty Valley is a boarding house. It has been so for generations in Misty Valley.” She slurped her tea. “Here boarders earn their keep. In today’s words that means… She paused a moment. “Yes, yes. Making a living. You make your living here by working. So, no one is ‘hosting’ you. She paused again to search for words. ‘He who does not work shall not eat.’ That’s the one. Yes.” The woman nodded at her own speech.

While very much overt, the theme of the book nonetheless feels organic rather than heavy-handed, underpinning and running throughout the plot. Thus Ms. Picotto soon sends Lina to work at various shops along Absurd Avenue, the valley’s Main St. Lina helps a bookseller organize stacks of books, meets a talking parrot who likes Robinson Crusoe, spots a centaur, six gnomes, and an imp, rescues an enchanted tiger, and saves a spoiled prince who had been turned into a piece of pottery by a forgetful wizard. Along the way, she also discovers that all the people who live in Misty Valley are “descendants of sorcerers.”

Written in 1975, The Village Beyond the Mist has that out-of-time, old-fashioned feel characteristic of the best children’s fantasies of its era. Lina is never unsafe as she travels, and there’s no concern about her going to work for strangers–as there surely would be in our twenty-first century world. Instead, she gains agency through service. While she often feels uncertain, timid, confused, and even sometimes angry, she grows confident and finds that she is able to help each shopkeeper and every person she encounters by doing her best and being herself.

And really, isn’t that the case for all of us?

The Village Beyond the Mist
Written by Sachiko Kashiwaba
Illustrated by Miho Satake
Translated from the Japanese by Avery Fischer Udagawa
ISBN: 9781632063922
May 27, 2025, Restless Books

You can buy a copy here.* (It’s not yet in libraries.)

*Book purchases made via our affiliate link may earn GLLI a small commission at no cost to you. Advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

Award-winning opera singer Nanette McGuinness is the translator of over 120 books and graphic novels for children and adults from French, Italian, German and Spanish into English, including the much-loved Geronimo Stilton Graphic Novels, as well as Tiki: A Very Ruff Year (nominated for the 2023 Eisner and Harvey Awards) and Alice on the Run: One Child’s Journey Through the Rwandan Civil War (2023 GLLI YA Translated Book Prize Honor Book, 2023 Mosaic Prize winner, 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalist and 2023 Harvey Award nominee). Accolades have also gone to her translations of Ellie in First Position (2024 ALA Top Ten Graphic Novels for Children), Magical History Tour: Vikings and Magical History Tour: Gandhi (both 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalists), Luisa: Now and Then (2019 Stonewall Honor Book; 2020 GLLI YA Translated Honor Book; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2019) and California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas & the Papas (2018 Harvey Award; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2018).