In these dark fairy tales, two girls face danger while grieving loved ones, and learn some hard truths about growing up along the way. Imaginative and curious, these fables illustrate adventures for children who have to make big choices.

In Amaryllis, a preteen goes missing on her birthday. Amaryllis heads out with her sister Fey’s ashes, determined to scatter the remains and set Fey free. But when she discovers that Fey is stuck between life and death, she realizes she has to join Fey on a trek to the Land of the Dead.

In Little Witch, a sickly mother and her daughter live in the deep, dark wood. One day, Big Witch finds an ogre caught in a trap. They make a deal: in return for saving him, the ogre agrees to take care of Little Witch once Big Witch has passed. Soon, the little girl finds herself in the ogre’s home, frightened and alone except for her pet cat. But when a Hunter Boy gets caught by the ogre, Little Witch must make a choice: save herself, save the boy, or choose another path . . .

Pascal Brullemans signed up at the National Theatre School to woo a girl, but he discovered he actually had talent, and his first play was directed by Wajdi Mouawad. After a foray into producing for young audiences with L’armoire, Pascal reached out to teens with his plays Isberg and Monstres. Amaryllis took top honours at Lyon Playwrights’ Days and won the Louise-LaHaye Award for Young Audiences in 2013. He lives in Montréal.

Pascal Brullemans' profile page

Alexis Diamond is a theatre artist, opera and musical librettist, translator, and theatre curator working on both sides of Montréal’s linguistic divide. Her award-winning works have been presented across Canada, the US, and Europe. Her translation of Pascal Brullemans’ plays for young audiences, Amaryllis and Little Witch (Playwrights Canada Press) was a finalist for the 2020 Governor General’s Award. In 2018, Alexis began a collaboration with Erin Hurley and Emma Tibaldo researching the history of English-language theatre in Québec. Alexis is the Anglo-Canadian theatre curator for the famed Festival du Jamais Lu; she presented the mostly French-language Faux-amis with co-author Hubert Lemire for the festival in 2019 and has continued to work on it with Hubert at the 2021 Banff Playwrights Lab. Upcoming tours of her theatre translations include The Problem with Pink by Érika Tremblay-Roy and Pascal Brullemans’s The Nonexistent. She is currently working on translating Alexia Bürger's Les Hardings and Marie-Hélène Larose-Truchon's Un oiseau m'attend. She lives in Montréal.

Alexis Diamond's profile page

• Nominated, Governor General's Literary Award