In the city of Lightning Pass, there is a school where girls with magic powers are trained to harness their abilities for the benefit of the city. One of them is Chantel, the brightest student they have, but also the least able to deport properly (ie, behave properly in front of others). She is being trained by Miss Ellicott to become a powerful magical maiden, alongside her eleven classmates.
Then one day, Miss Ellicott vanishes without a trace.
The patriarch who funds the school sends a new headmistress to fill in her role, Mrs. Warthall, but she isn't all that interested in teaching the girls magic as she is in having them just clean the building, striking them with a ladle for the slightest infraction.
Soon, Chantel and her friends, fellow student Anna, and pot-scrubber and sole boy at the school, Bowser, find out that all the magical maidens in Lightning Pass have disappeared, meaning there's no one to do the spell to strengthen Seven Buttons, a massive wall around Lightning Pass that protects the city from Marauders.
The children soon discover something about what Miss Ellicott has been making them do. It leads Chantel, Anna, and Bowser on a quest that could change the way they view the world.
The book was published on March 21st, 2017.
Miss Ellitt's School for the Magically Minded provides examples of:
- A Child Shall Lead Them: At the end of the novel, Chantel is named the new queen of Lightning Pass, and Franklin is the new leader of the Sunbiters.
- Cassandra Truth: Chantel, Anna, and Bowser ask a guard to let them back into Lightning Pass through a gate, stating that they're from Miss Ellicott's School. However, the guard doesn't buy their story for a moment, stating that students from that school wouldn't be outside the Seven Buttons.
- Child Soldier: Bowser is forced into service when the Sunbiters start to pose a threat to Lightning Pass.
- Corporal Punishment: Mrs. Warthall punishes anyone who steps out of line with a few strikes of a ladle.
- Familiar: Chantel has Japheth, a snake she summoned magically. He spends most of his time draped around her neck before he crawls into Chantel's head through her ear.
- Gender-Restricted Ability: In the world of the book, only girls are capable of doing magic. When she's with the Circle Of Mages, Chantal learns that men used to be able to do it as well.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: King Rathfest gets a crossbow bolt to the throat while trying to urge the populace into continuing the battle against the Sunbiters.King Rathfest: Fight on, for your country! Fight on, for your honor! For what is right! Drive back the Maraud-URK!
- Magic Is Feminine: In the book's setting, only girls are born with magic powers. In the town of Lightning Pass, girls are to attend the titular school to learn how to use their magic for the benefit of the town. However, when Chantel meets the Circle Of Mages, she sees that there are men among their ranks, and learns that men used to be born with magic as well.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: As it happens, Franklin is on the run from a Marauder known as Karl the Bloody.
- Orifice Invasion: At one point, Japheth enters Chantel's head through her ear, and stays in her body for a large part of the story.
- Skewed Priorities: While Chantel and Co. are discussing their next move regarding the Seven Buttons, the spell to strengthen it, and the situation with the Patriarchs, Miss Flivvers is far more concerned that, throughout all this, Chantel isn't following the proper deportment.
- Wizarding School: Miss Ellicott's titular school is where girls learn to harness their magical powers.
