How often do you find a book that can enchant 10-year-olds and grandparents, that feels both timeless and quirkily specific, that’s super creepy but also hugely life-affirming?

With “Island of Whispers,” Frances Hardinge delivers.

Milo, 14, is the son of the Ferryman, who takes the Dead from the land of the living to the Island of the Broken Tower — a mysterious place whose location in the misty seas is unfixed, ever-changing. When a person dies, a pair of their shoes, brought to the Ferryman by a loved one, accompanies them on the journey. Without their shoes, the Dead can’t move on.

Milo knows he’ll never inherit the Ferryman mantle himself. He’s always been too softhearted, too imaginative for such a dangerous job … or so his father has told him. His stolid, uncurious big brother, Leif, is more suited to it.

But of course, this is a fable, and that’s not how things work out. After the young daughter of the imperious lord of the land dies, the lord decides to use magic — and his daughter’s shoes — to bring her back. His men kill the Ferryman and capture Leif; Milo grabs his father’s boots and the girl’s slippers and escapes to the Ferryman’s boat. He’s determined to help his father and the lord’s daughter (also 14) get to the Island of the Broken Tower. He’s unprepared, but there’s no one else.

And though none of us knows what happens after death, we do know that death is immutable, and bringing things back to life rarely ends well. (Think Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary.”)

What follows is a race between the Ferryman’s boat and the lord’s boat. It’s made even more unnerving by the fact that the lord’s daughter doesn’t want to be dead, the lord’s magicians use all manner of traps to stop Milo from reaching the island, and tricks of light turn out be real. (“Falter-moths, grief-winged. Things of doubt and confusion that feed on loss. If you touch them, they will feed on you…”)

This is both a gothic ghost story and a seafaring tale. Hardinge’s language is lush and poetic (“unheard words left an uneasy smear across his mind, like the mood of a dream after waking”) but never self-indulgent. Everything feels necessary. The story is told in barely 100 pages.

And holy moly is it eerie: “Far above, wheeling through the mist, there was a bird. It was the size of a gull, and a rich, earthy brown. There was something wrong in the way it flew. It did not teeter or tilt the way seabirds do when they ride the wind. … When it alighted on the top of the mast, [Milo] saw that it had no head.”

There are three of these undead birds — one brown, one gray, one “mottled like old cheese.” All have tiny monkey hands instead of feet. One tries to fly into the hold, where the girl’s shoes are stored; Milo slams the hatch on it and cuts it in half. There’s no blood: “It was hollow and smooth inside, like a clay pot. Its monkey hands curled like dead spiders and were still. … Flutter-thud. Flit-flutter-flitter-flap. Thud. Then silence. Silence. Silence.”

Terrifying! And don’t get me started on the bridge of bones.

Such a hallucinatory, primal tale isn’t for everyone. But I can imagine families cuddled on a couch, reading this aloud together and freaking each other out. Or listening to the audiobook on a long car ride, as dusk turns to dark, to visit Grandma for the holidays.

Fortunately, Milo’s fundamental kindness and receptiveness to the emotions of the Dead aren’t the curse his father had predicted. He begins to hear the Dead’s whispers, their regrets, the things they’re sad to have left undone. His openheartedness helps him forge a stronger connection with his town’s living.

While we continue to struggle with the losses of the pandemic, and to yearn for community in a fractured time, there’s something incredibly hopeful about the note on which this book ends. Reader, I wept.

That said, I could have lived without the last page, which overexplains what’s come before.

Sadly, I’m not a huge fan of Emily Gravett’s illustrations. The story feels perfectly timeless, but Gravett (a two-time winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal for the best illustrated British children’s book) has created art that feels grounded in a too-specific period and place. The stark, bold illustrations, featuring characters in cloaks and ruffs, plumes and doublets, look like medieval woodcuts. Make no mistake, her art — in black, white and muted shades of blue — is gorgeous and accomplished, but it feels imagination-limiting rather than expansive.

And you know what? I’m not terribly bothered. My experience with Hardinge’s work has been her young adult novels, which are almost all more than 400 pages long; dense and knotty; richly descriptive but languorously paced. I know lots of adults, but far fewer young readers, who adore them. “Island of Whispers” has all their quirkiness and uncanny beauty, in a tighter and more accessible package.