Every Heart a Doorway

Every Heart a Doorway is a fantasy novella by the American writer Seanan McGuire, published in 2016. It is the first book of her Wayward Children series.

The premise of the book is that children have always disappeared under the right conditions, slipping through the shadows under a bed, out of the back of a wardrobe, down a rabbit hole or into an old well, and emerging somewhere else entirely. The trouble is that magical lands have little need for miracle children once they are used up, and those who come back find that they no longer fit anywhere. Nancy is one of them: she tumbled into another world once and has now returned, changed by what she experienced there. She arrives at a school run by Miss West where the other pupils understand exactly what has happened to her, because each of them came back from a world of their own and each is looking for a way back to it.

The series continues with further short books about the same school and its pupils, and each of them follows a different child.