Abarat (2002) is a fantasy novel written and illustrated by Clive Barker, the first in Barker's The Books of Abarat series. It is aimed primarily at young adults. The eponymous Abarat is a fictional archipelago which is the setting for the majority of the story. The title image contains an ambigram, which may indicate that it's derived from the Russian word 'наоборот' meaning 'backwards'. The paintings in the book are done with oils. Barker had already completed 300 paintings before he started working on the first book. By most accounts, Barker realised early that the story he wanted to tell could not be contained in one book. The American Library Association picked Abarat as one of its Best Books for Young Adults. Plot Abarat focuses on Candy Quackenbush, a teenage girl frustrated with her life in Chickentown, Minnesota. After an argument with her teacher over a school project and the doodling Candy has done in her school workbook, Candy leaves the school and goes to the edge of town, where she sees the remains of a lighthouse. She finds this incredibly strange because Chickentown is thousands of miles from the ocean. She then encounters a master thief named John Mischief who looks human except for the antlers on his head. Mischief's seven brothers live on these horns, appearing only as heads. Because he is pursued by a sinister humanoid being named Mendelson Shape, Mischief sends Candy to light the lamp in the lighthouse, which summons an ocean known as the Sea of Izabella from a parallel world. Candy climbs the rotting lighthouse stairs while the brothers distract Shape. When she reaches the top, she finds an inverted pyramid with a cup on top. As Shape gets away from Mischief and his brothers and begins to climb the stairs, Candy searches for the ball that goes in the cup and will light the lamp. She finds it and is surprised to see it is covered in swirling lines exactly like the ones she doodled in her school book. After giving her a key to protect and extinguishing the light, Mischief and Candy ride the seas to Abarat. A group of creatures carry them to a nearby island where Candy is separated from him. On the island, Candy learns that the Abarat consists of twenty-five islands, each occupying a different hour of the day, and was formerly connected to Candy's world before