The Grace of Wild Things by Heather Fawcett

Title: The Grace of Wild Things
Author: Heather Fawcett
Publication: Balzer + Bray/Harper Collins, hardcover, 2023
Genre: Juvenile Historical/Fantasy
Setting: Prince Edward Island

Description: Grace is a lonely orphan whose only talent is magic. Miserable at an orphanage, she runs away to the notorious witch in the woods and offers herself as an apprentice.

The Gilded Girl by Alyssa Colman, an alternate version of A Little Princess - with magic

Title: The Gilded Girl
Author: Alyssa Colman
Publication: Farrar Straus Giroux, hardcover, 2021
Genre: Middle-Grade Historical Fantasy
Setting: New York, 1905

Description: Emma Harris is brought to New York by her affluent architect father to attend an exclusive boarding school, Miss Posterity’s Academy for Practical Magic, which teaches well-born twelve-year-olds how to “kindle” or start channeling their magic skills as quasi-adults.

Withering-by-Sea and Wormwood Mire by Judith Rossell

Title: Withering-by-Sea and Wormwood Mire
Author and Illustrator: Judith Rossell
Publication: Atheneum, hardcovers, 2016 and 2017
Genre: Middle grade historical fantasy

Plot: In Withering-by-Sea, we meet Stella Montgomery, an eleven-year-old orphan being brought up by three disagreeable aunts and their spiteful maid Ada in the Hotel Majestic, somewhere in Victorian England. Stella longs for adventure but the closest she has come is reading about the Amazon in the Atlas she cherishes. When a desperate visitor to the hotel gives her something to hide, Stella is plunged into danger, forcing her to flee from a magician who wants to harm her. In the process, Stella makes friends (courageous Gert, part of a dancing act, and Ben, the unwilling assistant to Professor Starke) and starts seeking the truth about her own background.