The Twelve and the Genii

Blurb

The Twelve and the Genii, or The Return of the Twelves in the U.S., is a low fantasy novel for children by Pauline Clarke, first published by Faber in 1962 with illustrations by Cecil Leslie. It features a young boy and "what might have happened if the lost toy soldiers that once belonged to the Brontë children had ever been found again".
Clarke and The Twelve won the annual Carnegie Medal recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. Six years later she won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for the German-language edition, Die Zwölf vom Dachboden.
Coward–McCann published the first U.S. edition in 1964, under new title The Return of the Twelves with new illustrations by Bernarda Bryson.