Goodnight Silver

Goodnight Silver Synopsis

An epic animal adventure, filled with magic, from the best-selling author of Sky Song, Abi Elphinstone . . .

‘One last word revealed itself to them stitch by stitch, across the top of the map, until it shone like gold: Whisperfell.’

Emmy doesn’t believe in miracles. In her experience, hoping for extraordinary things never ends well.

So, when she is separated from her parents by a blizzard in the mountains of Mongolia, she assumes that she and the holiday are well and truly over. But from out of the shadows of the cave she shelters in steps a snow leopard cub. An animal even more lost than Emmy.

Then along comes a boy who believes in impossible things. And suddenly, Emmy finds herself on a quest to find a secret land, where wild animals live in peace. But can Emmy, along with a dreamer and a snow leopard cub, reach Whisperfell before the hunters close in? A magical adventure filled with enchanted maps An animal adventure with majestic snow leopards.

A story of a young girl learning to hope. With environmental themes. Gorgeously illustrated throughout by an award-winning artist.

Letter from the author:

Dear Reader,

Last year, I asked my eight-year-old a question: if you could hold a wild animal in your arms, which one would you choose? Without hesitation, he said: ‘a snow leopard cub.’ And when I asked why, he replied: ‘because they’re hardly ever seen so it would be like holding a miracle.’

That night, I started planning Goodnight Silver. I decided I wanted to write about a child who had given up on miracles. A girl who had hoped, to no avail, for something extraordinary. I found myself thinking of the hopes I’d built and seen dashed over many years when trying for a baby. But what might it feel like, I wondered, for a ten-year-old girl awaiting the arrival of a baby brother only to learn he wasn’t going to make it into our world after all?

Where would all that love and longing go? And what would it take to convince this girl that hope was a thing worth clinging to?

That’s where the snow leopard came in. Because to see the ‘ghost of the mountain’ – one of the most beautiful and elusive animals on our planet – would indeed be to witness a miracle. I’ve travelled to the realm of snow leopards before: to Mongolia’s Altai mountains.

And there I rode with the Kazakh Eagle Hunters, camped beneath ice-bright stars and heard the howls of distant wolves. But I never glimpsed a snow leopard. And I didn’t expect to. The chances were so slim, the possibility so unlikely.

Yet children revel in unlikelihoods. They’re hungry for wonder. They’re ready to believe that mountains hold secrets. As long as hope hasn’t been knocked clean out of them. So, alongside my heroine – a ten-year-old pessimist called Emmy – I started thinking about a Mongolian boy called Tuli.

He seeks out mysteries and miracles, he has a flock of goats named after famous poets and he rides a horse called Genghis Khan. He is in equal measures poet and warrior and when I wrote his scenes I had Mary Oliver’s poetry ringing in my ears.

Goodnight Silver, then, is an adventure that follows a pessimist, a poet and an abandoned snow leopard cub as they set off on a quest through Mongolia’s Altai mountains to find the magical land of Whisperfell. But it is also the story of a young girl learning to hope. A child who is lost in the wild and then saved by it.

Because sometimes it’s the smallest things in the natural world – like a cub who never should have stood a chance – that teach us the biggest truths. - Abi Elphinstone