Zilpha's Last Old Mansion? The Treasures of Weatherby by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

In what she (sadly) promises is her "last, big, old house story," Zilpha Keatley Snyder's The Treasures of Weatherby delivers another of her readers' favorite forms. Harleigh Weatherby IV, nicknamed "Hardly" at school for his extremely small size. is a loner, home-schooled and living among the remnants of his once-illustrious family in the grand, but slightly rundown old mansion built by the first Harleigh Weatherby. Recovering from serious heart surgery, Harleigh IV has despaired of ever growing to average size, but begins to asserts himself by choosing to live in a remote tower in the mansion called the "Aerie."

Searching the unkempt grounds for a reputed overgrown English maze, Harleigh meets up with a tiny, strange girl, seemingly waiting for him in a hidden treehouse. Dressed in the ragged remnants of a once glittering costume of some sort, Allegra claims to be able to "fly" over the estate walls and shows a preternatural interest in the old Weatherby mansion and the lives of the distant relatives who live there, particularly the huge and bad-tempered "Junior" Weatherby, whom she has seen at night using a metal detector around the grounds. Tricking Harleigh into letting her inside, Allegra claims to have heard Junior's detector inside Aunt Adelaide's bedroom. Adelaide, the matriarch and eldest of the direct descendents of Harleigh I, runs the household with an iron hand in the absence of Harleigh IV's father, a dilentante architect who is mostly away for months at a time.

Despite initial disbelief of Allegra's story, the secret of the missing family treasure and the possibility that Junior is also involved in stealing the lost fortune draws Harleigh deeper into the mystery until a dangerous showdown with his distant relative threatens Harleigh's life. Although the confrontation leads to his discovery of the hiding place of the hidden treasure, Harleigh is able to uncover only glimmers of the real history behind the appearance and disappearance of the enigmatic Allegra.

Readers of Zilpha Keatley Snyder's many noted novels since the 1960's will recognize the elements here which made her "big, old house" stories emotionally charged and thrilling experiences for decades of readers--a child, lonely and different, living with older relatives, a strange encounter with another child who hints of a touch of the supernatural, and an old mansion with the attraction of mysterious secrets and a hint of spirits with stories yet untold. Beginning with her first of this genre, The Velvet Room, now in a new edition, and stretching through The Trespassers, The Ghosts of Rathburn Park, and Spyhole Secrets, Snyder's gift for combining a deep understanding of the emotions of early adolescence with an imagination that provides the a glimpse of a world just beyond known reality is inimitable. Every child should have the rich experience of curling up on the hidden window seat in that "velvet room" and entering through her books into a mystery which is both thrilling and satisfying.

Other major books by Zilpha Snyder now available in new editions are The Changeling, Black and Blue Magic, and her Green Sky science fiction trilogy, beginning with the wonderful Below the Root. Still available also are her memorable Newbery Honor books The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid, and The Witches of Worm, also a National Book Award finalist.