Andrew Harwell

Andrew Harwell made his debut for young readers with a family mystery that develops gradually into layered magical adventure. Scholastic Press published The Spider Ring in 2015 as a middle-grade fantasy. The story begins when Maria inherits a ring shaped like a spider from her grandmother. She soon discovers that it can summon real spiders, an ability that draws her into a hidden struggle involving her family’s past and the dangerous Black Widow. Harwell grounds the fantasy in Maria’s grief, curiosity, and changing understanding of the grandmother who left her the object. The book’s city setting and swarms of unusually cooperative spiders give its magic a distinctly unsettling edge without losing its focus on courage and friendship. Before the novel appeared, Harwell worked in children’s publishing and lived in Brooklyn, experience that placed him close to the field in which his first book was released. The Spider Ring remains a concise example of middle-grade fantasy built around inheritance, secrecy, and an ordinary object becoming a demanding responsibility for Maria alone.