Robin Hood, Revisited: The Forest Queen by Betsy Cornwall

Silvie's life as the privileged daughter of the Lord of Loughsley Abbey is perfect. She enjoys the luxuries of a young noblewoman, and yet her older brother John, who rules in place of their aged father, allows her to ride and hunt and run free in Woodshire Forest with her best friend, Robin, called Bird, son of the Huntswoman of the manor. But when Silvie learns that the Abbey's healing nun, Mae Tuck, has been jailed for ministering to the pregnant Little Jane, she begins to see the suffering that lies behind her easy life.

"See. Silvie, it's not your brother John you are defending. It's your family. It's yourself," said Bird. "You want to believe that you are not complicit in this, in all the ugly things nobles do."

I looked back at Little Jane, pale and trembly, and I knew that I'd never done anything in my life that wasn't at least partly selfish.

Silvie suddenly sees the injustice of her brother John's rule. As sheriff of the shire, he sets burdensome taxes on all, tradesmen and farmers, and anyone who crosses him is imprisoned or cast into his grim oubliette to starve to death on the decaying bodies and bones of those already dead. With Bird by her side, she frees Mae Tuck and Little Jane, and they escape to their secret cave deep in Woodshire Forest.

They survive by Robin's ability to trap small animals and the prey his falcon brings to them. But they are soon followed by more and more of the townspeople of Esting. The colony of runaways thrives, helped by Silvie's midnight raids on the larders of Loughsley Abbey and confiscations of valuables from occasional nobles traveling through the forest. Little Jane's baby comes, the first freeborn citizen of their commune, and Silvie and Bird's benevolent rule continues to attract more followers to their colony. So successful are they that Silvie mounts a daring raid on John's ill-gotten treasury and distributes the bounty to the suffering people of the whole county round.

But Bird and Silvie grow too confident. Disguised, the men dressed as women and the women as men, they attend the May Day festival, only to return to their forest home to find that John has attacked the colony and set their trees and houses ablaze. Most of their friends are dead, and Bird and Silvie are captured by John and thrown into his grisly oubliette to starve. Days pass and both grow almost too weak to stand.

Then Silvie is visited by what she first takes for an angel. But it is her hunting owl, Scarlet, floating down from the small opening in the ceiling of the dungeon above.

... there was a small and tightly rolled piece of paper. One line. I knew the handwriting. Mae Tuck.

We are coming. Take heart.

Sophisticated young adult readers will soon recognize Betsy Cornwall's The Forest Queen (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2018) as an inspired and inspiring feminist rewrite of the Robin Hood legend. Like the original, it is a passionate statement of the cause of freedom from tyranny, but Cornwall's gender reversal puts feminine characters in the familiar roles of Little John, Alan-a-Dale, and Friar Tuck. Silvie and Bird (Robin) share aspects of the role of Robin Hood, but it is clearly Silvie who is chief of this merrie band in the greenwood, and, humorously, even Will Scarlet and Much-the-miller's-son appear as female owls. Stirring adventures led by girls and women are now a staple of movies and novels, but Cornwell's novel makes clear the association of personal liberty, the theme of the Robin Hood legend, with a women's right to choose her own social role in society.

While this novel stands well on its own, its reading will be enriched by knowledge of the Robin Hood legend. Howard Pyle's strikingly illustrated The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (Digireads, 2017) remains the gold standard for lusty Robin Hood tales, although Roger Lancelyn Green's colloquial The Adventures of Robin Hood (Puffin Classics) is more accessible for middle readers.

And for girls who prefer a female leader, Nancy Springer's Rowan Hood: Outlaw Girl of Sherwood Forest (Rowan Hood (Paperback)) offers another feminist alternative as the crusading outlaw heroine (read my review here), full of medieval flavor and with a bold charismatic feminine hero, Robin Hood's daughter Rowan. But where Rowan is a solitary heroine with few followers, Betsy Cornwall's Forest Queen Sylvie is a social reformer who rouses the poor to help overthrow the rule of her brother John, the parallel character to Pyle's Black John, whose cruel rule in the absence of his brother King Richard ended in the signing of the Magna Carta. Told in the first person, Silvie's metamorphosis from pampered noblewoman to a brave and able spokesperson for equality becomes central. All readers will find Cornwall's new queen of the greenwood a powerful and sympathetic hero for our time and all times.

Save the Children: Jars of Hope: How One Woman Helped Save 2,500 Children During the Holocaust by Jennifer Roy

JULY 18, 1942

Irena knocked on a door."It is time," she said.

Henia Koppel gently placed her baby girl into Irena's carpenter's toolbox. Irena put a dropper of medicine into Bieta's mouth to make her sleepy.

As Irena began to close the box, the baby's grandfather quickly slipped something inside. It was a small silver spoon marked with the baby's name--Elzbieta, 5 January, 1942.

"A gift from her Momma and Poppa," he said, wiping tears from his eyes.

Irena took a deep breath and stepped out into the Warsaw Ghetto, carrying her precious cargo.

When Irena Sendler was a little girl in Poland, going with her doctor father on visits, she noticed that the Jewish people were treated differently from the others.

"Irena," her father said, "It doesn't matter if they are rich or poor, what religion or race. What matters is if they are good or bad."

Irena grew up to become a social worker, and when the Nazis took over Poland and locked the Jews of Warsaw inside the Ghetto, she felt compelled to help them. Assigned to seeing that everyone inside the walls was vaccinated, she began to smuggle in food and medicines. Then, seeing the beginning of the "transportation" of the Jews to concentration camps, she resolved to save as many children as she could from death.

Working with Zegota, the Polish resistance movement, Irena smuggled children out of Ghetto in delivery trucks, in potato sacks, in loads of trash, through sewer tunnels, or even hidden inside of coffins. A truck driver friend helped her with babies, training his dog Shepsi to bark loudly on cue to drown out any crying. She gave the older children new Christian names and taught them to say the Lord's Prayer like good Catholics and found foster parents or safe houses for them in orphanages and convents.

Everyone knew that if caught they would be put to death. But it was the right thing to do.

Elena even risked her life further by keeping secret lists of the families of the rescued children so that they might be reunited after the war. She buried the jars with the records inside by night in a friend's yard, and when she was taken to jail, interrogated and beaten by the Gestapo, she revealed nothing.

"I'm just a social worker," Elena would answer. "I don't know anything."

And because of Elena's jars of hope, those parents who survived the concentration camps were able to be reunited with their children, and baby Bieta grew up to remain friends with Irena until she died just short of her 100th birthday.

Jennifer Roy's Jars of Hope: How One Woman Helped Save 2,500 Children During the Holocaust (Encounter: Narrative Nonfiction Picture Books) (Capstone Press, 2015) tells the true story of Irena Sendler, a lesser-known but courageous hero of the Holocaust.  For young readers familiar with that grim piece of World War II history, the author uses an accessible narrative style to take elementary reader right into the terror-filled moments Irena must have known as she risked her life as one of the "Righteous Christians" of Poland.  There is suspense aplenty in the accounts of Irena's harrowing rescues to grip middle readers' attention, and in artist Meg Owenson's paintings, done in a sober palette of deep shades and dim light reminiscent of vintage sepia photos, which make real the sorrows of that long-ago Warsaw Ghetto. A fine addition to the history and literature of that war and its real heroes, and a good preface for the reading of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.

Appended are an Author's Note and Afterword telling of the long life and work of Irena Sendler, a glossary, source notes, and index.

It's in the Cards! Dangerous Deceptions (Palace of Spies) by Sarah Zettel

I could not tear my mind away from Sebastian Sandford and his abrupt return to my life.

Given the manner in which I'd left my uncle's house and all that had happened since, it never occurred to me that anyone would want to enforce the betrothal contract that existed between my uncle and Sebastian's father. I'd assumed the contract was broken by my uncle's failure to bring me to the church. But now the horrible possibility that I had been wrong descended upon me. As an underaged girl, I remained completely under the control of my nearest male relative. I could be given in marriage to a street sweeper or sold to an indenture to the Virginia Colony, as he saw fit.

I will admit, given that my other choice was Sebastian, street sweepers and colonies had a certain appeal.

Peggy had thought that as a newly favorite maid-in-waiting at the court of the Hanoverian Princess and Prince of Wales, she was safe from the betrothal in which her nefarious Uncle Pierpont had attempted to bind her. Peggy had barely fought off Sebastian's most improper assault, and when she refused the marriage, she had been literally thrown out of her uncle's house, leaving her orphaned and on the street at the tender age of sixteen. But her mysterious benefactor, Lord Tierney, manages to place her at the Court of St. James, not from kindness, but to serve as an impostor, a spy against the Jacobite conspiracy working to place James Stuart on the throne of England.

Peggy has begun to feel safe at court, having mastered a proper courtier's art of flirtation, the endless little dishonesties at cards, and the rivalrous intrigues of the maids-in-waiting Mary and Sophie, and welcomes the loyalty of her friend Molly Lepell and her cousin Olivia, her true love, Matthew, and the special favor of the six-year-old dog-loving Princess Anne. But she is thrown off-balance by the appearance of Sebastian, whose powerful uncle, Lord Lynnfield, threatens to enforce their marriage contract against her wishes. Peggy's intuition tells her that Sebastian's reappearance is some sort of blackmail to ensure the complicity of her banker uncle, and she has a suspicion that Jacobite loyalists are behind it somewhere. Politics aside, Peggy knows she cannot sacrifice her love for Matthew and marry the brutal Sebastian at any cost.

It all comes down to a wager at cards, in which Lord Lynnfield offers Peggy freedom from the betrothal and a wager of a small fortune only if she can beat his nephew at the gambling table, witnessed by the Princess Caroline, Prince George, and the full court.

My prologue was over. The stage was ready for me. "Mr. Sandford," I said cheerfully, "I believe you asked me for a game of piquet when we last met."

Her Royal Highness had risen. She moved forward to join my party. It was not to be missed that His Royal Highness remained at her side.

"This is most irregular, Lord Lynnfield," she remarked.

But despite her sovereign's offer of support, Peggy agrees that the game go forward. Her opponent is careful not to win too quickly. At long last the deadly game comes down to the last trick.

I pressed my hand to my bosom. Dear God, I must have counted right.

He lay his cards down. "This hand is mine, I believe." The whole of the crowd gasped.

"And there it is, Miss Fitzroy. You're mine."

But, as it turns out, Peggy Fitzroy has a final card up her sleeve, or rather, inexplicably resting on the floor under Lynnfield's own foot.

Peggy turns the tables most literally, but there are plenty of swashbuckling abductions, daring rescues, and quite a dunking in the dank and fetid waters of the Thames before our heroine emerges, high and dry in a surprisingly revealing but unsuspected conclusion, one which assures her rapt readers yet another courtly adventure in the delicious forthcoming Dangerous Deceptions (Palace of Spies) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).  Life at the court of the future King George I of England is anything but polite company, and author Sarah Zettel promises another historical fiction romp, a spy-in-the-salon page turner in this unique and riveting series, with its indomitable heroine Peggy Fitzroy overcoming cardsharpers, blackguards, murderous conspirators, and her cruelly confining corset stays to triumph over all.

To find out more about how Peggy Fitzroy finds herself in such a royal pickle, read my review of Book 1 in this series, Palace of Spies, here. And for those readers who just can't wait for another round of palace intrigues in the the third book in this trilogy, may I recommend Carolyn Meyer's The Wild Queen: The Days and Nights of Mary, Queen of Scots (Young Royals), reviewed here for  a lusty review of Jocobean conspiracies.

Journal of the Plague Year: A Death-Struck Year by Makiia Lucier

"Cleo?"

"Hmmm?" I hunched over Emily's doll. The light in the stairway was poor, and I wondered if I should fix the doll back in my room near a window. I dismissed the thought. Fanny was there, more snappish than usual. When there was no response from Emily, I glanced up. The child looked at me, uncertain.

"In the library I heard Mr. Brownmiller and Miss Abernathy talking...." Emily said softly.

I paused. "What did you hear?"

"Well, Mr. Brownmiller said that people in Phil..., Phila...."

"Philadelphia?" I prompted.

"He said people in Philadelphia were dropping like flies. Because of the Spanish influenza. He said they were running out of coffins. Is that true, Cleo? Are we going to drop dead, too?" Emily's voice quivered.

Cleo resents being shuttled off for a month of dormitory life at the girls' school where she has always been a day student, while her guardians, older brother Jack and wife Lucy, are away for a vacation in San Francisco.  Sharing a small room with four restless seniors, all ready to move on with their life plans, has made her discontented with her own lack of  motivation. Cleo vaguely wants to go to college, but has no idea what the purpose of her life may be.

Although she tries to reassure little Emily and herself that the epidemic is thousands of miles away from Portland, Cleo soon hears that a troop of soldiers just arrived from Boston have begun to sicken and die and watches life changing all around her. Schools, churches, theaters and even stores close, as people don masks and avoid contact as much as possible. Then, when her school orders all residential students home, Cleo decides to slip away in the confusion of departures and stay put alone in the safety in her house until Jack and Lucy return.

But Lucy, pregnant with a long-hoped-for child, cannot yet travel, and when Cleo finds herself on her own, the silence in the house on her first night is not as welcome as she had thought. Unable to sleep, she pulls out a newspaper she bought on the way home and reads a surprising notice:

RED CROSS APPEALS TO WOMEN TO ENLIST

The American Red Cross has issued an urgent plea that all graduate nurses, practical nurses, and Red Cross nurses' aides enroll for immediate service in combating the Spanish influenza.

Also needed are members of the community willing to canvass neighborhoods, distributing prevention literature and helping to locate and transport unattended cases to area hospitals. Those with automobiles are particularly encouraged to make themselves known.

The words "unattended cases" leap out, and her heart turns over, remembering how her parents died in a carriage accident, her mother slowly bleeding to death as the six-year-old Cleo watched while no one came.

I thought of my mother and father. Twelve years had passed, but I still knew exactly what it was to be an unattended case.

There are two cars in the garage, both of which Jack has taught her to drive. Perhaps, Cleo thinks, she can at least help locate those unattended cases.

But when Cleo puts on the Red Cross armband, she has no idea of the horrors before her. Soon she is working with Edward, a young soldier injured in the war in France, and with Kate, a brave young woman her own age, even helping dig graves for the unburied coffins stacking up in the morgues.

But then Kate is suddenly taken gravely ill, and Cleo knows that she may well be next.

Maciia Lucier's A Death-Struck Year (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) is a hard-hitting story of that worldwide pandemic that killed more people than the historic Black Plague and World War I together. What Cleo and Lucier's other closely-drawn characters lived through is what many millions experienced in those two years of the pandemic which, along with the war that helped spread it, changed the world forever. A stunningly realistic picture of desperate courage, young love, and human endurance, this is a page-turning, eye-opening piece of young adult historic fiction which resonates today in a time of the instant spread of epidemic diseases unknown to us.

A twentieth-century account similar to Laurie Halse Anderson's Newbery-winning classic, Fever 1793., this novel offers historical notes and a bibliography which make this absorbing first-person narrative useful as adjunct reading for students of American history.

Funny Money on the Rock: Al Capone Does My Homework by Gennifer Choldenko

No one ever believes I live on Alcatraz. Even my eighth-grade history teacher made me write on the chalkboard "I do not live on Alcatraz" two hundred times. She didn't even apologize when she found out I wasn't lying.

My father had trouble getting his driver's license. They thought he was an escaped prisoner too stupid to fake his address instead of an officer at the most notorious prison in North America.

My friend Annie was kicked out of Sunday school for saying she lived on Alcatraz.

Moose Flanagan is worried. He's used to living on Alcatraz Island, a stone's, or in Moose's case, a baseball's throw, from the Big House, with convicts (even Al "Scarface" Capone) doing their laundry and trustees making repairs in their apartment in Building 64. But when his dad is appointed Associate Warden. Moose has more to worry about than usual. His autistic sister Natalie is now sixteen and in some ways harder to manage than ever, but his main worry is about his father's promotion.

Officer Darby Trixle clearly is angry about being passed over for the job, and his wife, always critical of Natalie's presence, seems to be on a mission to find fault with all of them. And then Piper, the Warden's pretty but pretentious daughter, shows him the cons' point system, found in the kitchen.

SPITTING ON A GUARD = 5
SPITTING ON A WARDEN = 20
MAKING A SHIV = 40
STABBING A WARDEN = 500

Now Mouse has to worry about his dad, too. And then, while sitting with the sleeping Natalie, Mouse drops off to sleep and awakens to find the apartment ablaze. He gets his sister out safely, but most of his stuff, including his history report on President Roosevelt, is gone. And while the family relocates while the cons repair their apartment, other strange events seem to be happening. Mouse finds some bills mysteriously left in the laundry, Piper shows him an expensive cashmere sweater "from her secret admirer," and other people find "gifts" and mysterious bills, tens and twenties, left without a clue. To make matters worse, Mouse's teacher says he has to redo his homework, but even worse, Mrs. Trixle starts a whispering campaign to convince the other residents that Natalie started the fire and that she is a danger to everyone on Alcatraz. Then Mouse finds his history folder suddenly returned to the apartment, with a penciled addition written by Capone himself, a cryptic warning that ends with "It's a state affair."

Mouse and his friend Annie realize that to protect Natalie from being sent away to a residential school, they must discover the identity of the real arsonist, and to do so they must trust Piper, who knows most of what goes on on the Rock. Gradually, they begin to see that the mysterious money is somehow at the root of the mystery.

Then his father is knifed by a convict nicknamed "Indiana," and Mouse realizes what Capone's warning must have meant.

Gennifer Choldenko's third and final book in her series, Al Capone Does My Homework (Dial Books, 2013), has all the qualities--a main character who feels responsible for everything, a mystery set on Alcatraz Island in the 1930s with a cast of believable, colorful, and sometimes murderous characters, among them  Capone, who seems to have taken a shine to Mouse, and a coming-of-age story with all the feelings of a thirteen-year-old protagonist--that earned her first book, Al Capone Does My Shirts its Newbery Honor Medal, and her second book, Al Capone Shines My Shoes rave reviews. This final book in the trilogy is exciting and yet satisfying, with a sense of completion for readers, but also with a sense of regret that the story of Mouse Flanagan has come to an end.  Choldenko spent ten years of her life researching and writing this series, and we can only hope she finds another subject so engaging.

Kirkus Reviews caps it well, saying "A satisfying finale to what has become a cornerstone series in contemporary children's literature."

Reluctant Heroine: High Time for Heroes (Magic Tree House #51) by Mary Pope Osborne

Jack sat in a sunny spot on the front porch, studying a book of magic tricks. He was planning a magic show.

"Hey," Annie tapped on his screen door. "Let's do something."

"I'm already doing something," said Jack. He took another sip of lemonade and added more tricks to his list.

Annie gasped. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"That whooshing sound," said Annie. "Like the tree house just whooshed into the woods!"

It's midsummer, and Annie has ants in her pants, craving action. As usual, Jack is in the middle of a project and has reluctantly followed Annie's false alarms into the Frog Creek woods several times this week, but this time the Magic Tree House is really waiting for them there, with another Merlin mission to follow:

Dear Jack and Annie,

I hope you enjoyed your time with the Houdinis. I ask you now to find the third secret of greatness from a woman named Florence Nightingale.

---M.

Annie is psyched! She's already done a project on Florence Nightingale for school. "I feel like I know her! I can't wait!" she says.

But the magic tree house takes them, not to England where Florence lived, or the Crimea, where Nightingale became famous as the "Lady of the Lamp," nursing the wounded in the war, but to the dusty, fly- and mosquito-ridden banks of the Nile near Thebes in Egypt in 1850. Jack and Annie meet up with the Bracebridges, an English couple traveling with Miss Nightingale who agree to introduce them. This mission seems a cinch to Annie, who figures she'll just ask the founder of nursing her secret of greatness, the magic ring of truth will glow when Florence shares her secret, and they'll be done.

But Miss Nightingale is nothing like the Florence of Annie's school project. She seems curiously detached and reticent and quickly denies that she is either famous or gifted in nursing. Her current interest seems to be in anthropological research in Luxor and the Valley of the Kings. Travel in Egypt is a quite acceptable dalliance for a young unmarried woman of the time, but Florence admits that although she is interested in nursing, her parents would never allow her to pursue a professional life of any sort. Annie speaks up to disagree, but the Bracebridges and Florence point out that her duty is to do as her parents require her.

Annie is confused, but Jack points out that they have no choice but to follow Florence into the Valley of the Kings and try to talk to her some more. Annie rents two donkeys from Ali, the son of Mustafa the guide, and Jack packs up his leather pouch with Merlin's provisions--Egypt Travellers' Handbook, the vial with the magic mist, and hands Annie the ring of truth to wear, and they are off into the desert.

But along the way the two are sidetracked when they try to rescue a baby baboon from a pack of jackals. The baboon escapes up a cliff, but can't get back down.

"We have to go get her!" said Annie.

"We can't climb up there!" said Jack.  "Only the best rock climbers in the world could get up there."

"We can do that!" said Annie. "The mist. We can use the magic mist and make a wish to be great rock climbers."

As it did before, the magic mist of Avalon grants a great talent, enabling Jack and Annie to scale the cliff like experts and retrieve the little baboon. But they can't resist sitting down to rest and take in the amazing view of the Nile and the pyramids in the distance, and when they are half-way down the cliff, the hour of magical talent that the mist offers runs out. and Jack and Annie fall to the bottom. Annie has a badly sprained ankle, and Jack's shoulder and arm are too painful to move. The two time travelers find themselves longing for the quiet safety of the Frog Creek woods. But help appears in the form of Florence Nightingale, who gets them back to the Bracebridges' boat and treats their injuries, and in the course of the night, comes to a decision about her future that will change her life and the future of medicine.

"How to say it..." said Florence. "... I truly believe, deep in my heart, that one's life must have meaning and purpose."

Jack and Annie hardly need to look at the glowing ring of truth to know that they have their third secret of greatness for Merlin, in Mary Pope Osborne's latest, Magic Tree House #51: High Time for Heroes (A Stepping Stone Book(TM)) (Random House, 2014). The two return home to add meaning and purpose to humility and hard work in their list of secrets of greatness and to wait for the fourth and final Merlin mission. Osborne's engrossing mixture of history and time-travel adventure continues to enthrall beginning chapter readers, and as always, lends itself easily to several core curriculum strands, including character education, for classroom use.

The nonfiction companion book for this novel is Magic Tree House Fact Tracker #28: Heroes for All Times: A Nonfiction Companion to Magic Tree House #51: High Time for Heroes (A Stepping Stone Book(TM)) (Random House, 2014), providing insight into the lives of a variety of heroes who changed history, from John Muir to Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman to Gandhi.

The Great Escape! Hurry Up, Houdini!" (Magic Tree House #50) by Mary Pope Osborne

Dear Jack and Annie,
Thank you for successfully completing your first mission to find a secret of greatness. Now on your new mission, I would like you to  learn a second secret--this time, from the Great Houdini.
--Merlin

"Oh, man! The Great Houdini!" said Jack "He could escape from anything! Chains, ropes, locks, handcuffs, prisons! He was amazing!"

"Was he a criminal?" asked Annie.

"No, a performer--the greatest escape artist who ever lived!" said Jack.

It's the mid-summer in Frog Creek, and Jack and Annie find Merlin's note in the Magic Tree House a welcome escape from routine--a chance to take a time-travel mini-vacation to Coney Island in 1908 and meet the famous magician Harry Houdini.

The tree house comes down in a curious tree in the Japanese Tea Garden, where Jack and Annie discover themselves dressed in turn-of-the century knee pants with watch pocket for Jack and a jaunty sailor dress for his sister, with pockets full of pennies packed with plenty of purchasing power. The ever-conscientious Jack wants to buy tickets for Houdini's nine o'clock show right away, but the excitable Annie is enchanted by the thousands of tiny electric lights stung everywhere, and she just has to try a Coney Island hot dog, a real waffle cone, and some of Coney Island's famous rides. In a bit of literary irony, the sophisticated time and space travelers Annie and Jack prove a hard sell for the carnival ride shills:

"Trip to the Moon!" a young man shouted to them.

"Been there!" Jack said. "Done that!" added Annie

"Submarine ride! Departing now for the North Pole?"

"Been there!" said Annie. "Done that!" said Jack.

"Kansas Cyclone!" a girl shouted. "Come inside and be blown away!"

"Been there, done that, too!" said Jack. Annie laughed.

Still, thanks to Annie, by the time they arrive at the theater, their pockets are lighter, except for a vial of Merlin's Magic Mist, which enables them to be the world's best at anything. But, as Jack had feared, Houdini's show is already sold out, and the restive crowd outside is threatening a riot because the magic act set to open for Houdini seems to have absconded with the box office receipts and disappeared. How can the kids get inside and meet Harry Houdini to discover his own secret of greatness?

But the resourceful and daring Annie has a plan. Fast-talking her way in to see the stage manager, she sells him on the two of them as an magic act, Jolly Jack and the Amazing Annie, as a replacement opening act. A whiff from the magic vial for each of them turns Jack and Annie into the world's best magicians for an hour and they dazzle the crowd, and once inside the theater, they are sure that, even minus magical prowess, they have the power to complete their mission to discover Houdini's secret of greatness.

But surprisingly the secret doesn't come from Houdini himself, in Mary Pope Osborne's just-published-this-week Magic Tree House #50: Hurry Up, Houdini! (A Stepping Stone Book(TM)) (Random House, 2013), illustrated as always by the esteemed veteran artist Sal Murdocca. With this fiftieth title in the amazing Magic Tree House series, Osborne displays that she still has the wizardry to transform beginning readers into chapter book readers and whik them away on a summery theme-park mission with her potent magical mix of history, fantasy time-travel, and adventure that never fails to amaze and delight readers and to make the best-selling lists as well.

As is the tradition with Osborne's fiction books, this one is accompanied by a new non-fiction companion book, Magic Tricks from the Tree House: A fun companion to Magic Tree House #50: Hurry Up, Houdini! (A Stepping Stone Book(TM)) (Random House, 2013) with magic skills for those would-be Jolly Jacks and Amazing Annies among the beginning chapter book set.

Hi, Ho, Come to the Fair: Will Sparrow's Road by Karen Cushman

I care for no one but myself and nothing but my belly!"

Twelve-year-old Will Sparrow travels light, as befits a runaway, and his philosophy lies even lighter upon his conscience.

Abandoned by his mother and sold to a cruel tavern keeper for all the ale he can drink by his drunkard father, Will swipes one too many meat pies from the kitchen and faces a short-lived future as a chimney-sweeper's boy, and he is only saved from that fate by the quickness of his heels. Will hits the road with nothing but a horse blanket stolen from his master's barn and a bag of apples pillaged from an orchard and whatever provender he can find to fill his belly along the way.

And on that road to he knows not where, Will encounters other wanderers--Nell Liftpurse, who steals his boots, his blanket, and his apples to boot, a larcenous tooth-puller who offers him a meal in trade for pretending to have a tooth pulled painlessly, a conjurer with lying legerdemain, and a kindly stout man with a trained pig named Duchess, who feeds him and takes him along to a fair.

For a self-proclaimed liar and thief, Will finds a town the most likely place to provide provender, and as the spires of a promising minster rise in the distance, he finds the road becoming crowded with beggars, pilgrims, peddlers, and wanderers like himself.

"What town be this?" Will asked a metalsmith with cooking pots and warming pans tied to his donkey.

"It be Peterborough. Or Scarborough" the metalsmith answered. "Or mayhap Foxborough or Dogbourough. 'Tis some borough, I believe."

"Tis a fine fair, I hear. Three days long. Goods aplenty to buy for those with coins, and smells to smell for those without."

Hoping to pinch a loaf from a busy baker or cadge a copper from someone needing an extra hand setting up a booth, Will eagerly enters the town and indeed does find employment with a seemingly kind presenter of "curiosities and wonders" who promises him tuppence a day and dinner for his work as wagon driver and shill for his show. Will finds himself among  assorted oddities claimed to be a one-eyed pig, a unicorn's skull, and a sea monster skeleton, and a baby mermaid in a flask. But chief among the exhibits are a bad-tempered dwarf named FitzGeoffory, and the fur-faced cat-girl who calls herself Grace Wyse.

At first Will thinks his new master a fair man and his living prodigies freakish and frightening. But as he works with them, and they move on to Ely Fair, Will learns a new lesson, that things are not always what they seem, and when Tidball tries to sell Grace to innkeeper, beating poor Fitz mercilously when he defends the child, Will has to come to their aid. He shoves Tidball down, his head hitting rock, and Will fears that he will be hanged by the sheriff for murder.

But as Will hits the road alone again, he begins to think.

Would the law take Fitz and Grace and punish them?

Fitz and Grace were oddities, easy to accuse. Will's face flushed with shame. He had left them to take the blame.

But he cared for no one but himself, did he not?

Faced with a choice between human ties and self-protection, Will Sparrow takes a new road in Karen Cushman's forthcoming Will Sparrow's Road (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2012). Cushman, a two-time Newbery winner for her outstanding historical fiction (CATHERINE, CALLED BIRDY and The Midwife's Apprentice) breaks some new ground with her first boy protagonist, moving from medieval to Elizabethan England, to tell of the nonstop adventures of Will Sparrow, whose fleet feet and quick wits belie the good heart which lead him finally to the home and family he longs for. A coming-of-age story set in a very different time from our own, this tale of Cushman's makes this world come alive for middle readers.

An appended Author's Note provides a history of fairs from prehistory through the twentieth century, where the sideshow of freaks and wonders persisted until recently in our own regional state and county fairs and carnivals.  Cushman also provides a extensive bibliography of related titles for middle readers.

Bonkers! Out in Left Field by Don Lemna

I was off in the right direction as soon as I heard the crack of the bat. This one was all mine.

The ball was on the way down and I was running flat out when Axel's shoulder brushed against me. "I got it!" he cried.

"It's mine!" I yelled.

But unfortunately when I bumped him away, for just a moment I took my eyes off the ball. The ball then completed its trajectory, smacking into my forehead. Darkness fell.

... As soon as my brain began to function, a ghastly beast lurking somewhere in the depths of my memory stood up on its hideous hind legs and staggered forward to confront me.

"I missed it!" I cried out. I had missed the catch that would have brought victory to our school. I had missed the catch that would have covered me with glory. Instead, I had covered myself with shame.

Belittled by Axel, who named him "Donald Duck" and hogs the outfield, Don had hoped to redeem himself in the big game, only to become the only boy in the history of Stanton School to have suffered a concussion caused by a fly ball.

Worried that his despair will impede his recovery, Don's parents try to raise his spirits by taking him to a movie in town--a rare treat in 1947. Don chooses the movie Robin Hood, and his spirits begin to rise. He will become a lethal archer and dazzle all the kids with his skill. But archery sets cost $8.99, an impossible sum on his cash-strapped farm, and Don sees that his only hope of redeeming his reputation is to collect enough beer bottles from the field of their hard-drinking neighbor Charlie to buy his own set. At two cents a bottle, Don figures that with the Schneider girls' red wagon he can earn the bow and arrow by hauling only 75 cases of 12 bottles each back home.

As I headed toward the road, I tried to figure out how many trips up and down the hill I'd have to make... at two cases per trip. By the time I reached the edge of the hill, I'd discovered that I was not able to do arithmetic in my head. It seemed to me that there would be half a trip left over. How could I make half a trip?

Don solves his math problem by charming Charlie into driving the needed bottles over in his truck. Even though he earns the archery set, it turns out not to be the panacea for his social problems he'd planned, and when his little brother cajoles him into a bow-and-arrow lesson, Pat manages to shoot the arrow over the barn and right into the rear end of the family's bull Rodger. When Rodger reacts by taking out the chicken coop, the archery gambit goes into hiatus.

No problem. When his mom refuses to do the job, Don determines to salvage his honor by offering to drive his father's truck at harvest time, a task which will get him out of school along with those admired eighth grade boys, but after some impressive initial lessons, Don manages to back the truck into the auger, and his truck-driving career goes on hold as well.

Undeterred, Don pins his social redemption hopes on hockey season, but when the pond finally freezes over, he discovers his old skates are too small and his parents insist that he has to wait until Christmas for new ones. Mom offers her old white figure skates, the wearing of which only results in more humiliation at the hands of Axel and his buddies, and when Don carefully pens a shamelessly begging letter to his rich aunt asking for skates, she misreads his overly fancy writing as a request for skiis, which Don manages to shatter in his first trip down Suicide Hill.

Don can't catch a break as his sixth-grade year marches on through one disaster after another, with the jubilant Axel making the most of every one of them. Don feels that inevitably he's going to have to fight the larger and stronger Axel in defense of his honor, but when that moment comes, the outcome is not at all what Donald expects.

Don Lemna's second semi-autobiographical tale of his Montana boyhood, Out in Left Field (Holiday House, 2012) is a hilarious sequel which compares well with Robert Peck's Soup series and is firmly in the American humor tradition of Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Dover Thrift Editions) and Tarkington's Penrod, Although the book's equally funny predecessor, When the Sergeant Came Marching Home, (see my review here) sets the scene in post-war rural America, "before the electricity" came to farm country, this one easily stands on its own. Perfect for family or classroom read alouds, Out in Left Field is a laugh-out-loud humorous bit of mid-century American historical fiction, a very different time when boys competed for status outdoors rather than at video games, but in which human nature remains totally recogizable.

"... Humor runs rampant throughout this story," says School Library Journal.

Snakes Alive! A Crazy Day with Cobras (Magic Tree House #45) by Mary Pope Osborne

The winds blew harder.

"What's happening?" cried Annie. Suddenly two figures ran out of the woods.

"Teddy!" cried Annie. "Kathleen!" said Jack.

"You must come with us to the tree house!" cried Teddy and Kathleen.

"We made a terrible mistake! We desperately need your help!"

Jack and Annie are used to having the Magic Tree House appear suddenly in the Frog Creek Woods and finding Morgan or Teddy or Kathleen waiting serenely inside to send them forth on their missionm, always providing a guidebook and something magical to assist them in their mission. But this time is different.

Teddy and Kathleen are in trouble. Without telling Morgan, they have been trying out her forbidden Book of Spells and have turned Merlin's beloved penguin to stone and cannot undo the spell without mortal help.

Jack and Annie soon find themselves on their way to a land distant in time and space--to the time of the building of the Taj Mahal in India--with a mission to recover the first of four powerful items that will allow the spell to be undone. Equipped only with a potion that can make them grow smaller and larger, the two kids find themselves dressed in silken finery, impersonating ambassadors to the court of the powerful Mogul, a ruler so mighty that no one is allowed to speak to him without his permission, on pain of death!

Annie and Jack are more frightened than they have ever been, even at the court of the Empress of Austria, but when they bow low before the Mogul, he presents them with a gift, just the emerald they have been sent to find. Then the elephant to which they have been assigned to ride out of the Mogul's court suddenly breaks out of the proession and charges into the jungle, where she dumps them to find her lost baby. In the turmoil Jack drops the emerald, and before the two can locate it, a giant King Cobra seizes it and takes it back to her nest. Will Jack and Annie fail their mission and be stuck in medieval India forever?

Very few children's series ever make it into double digits, much less close to fifty sequels, but Mary Pope Osborne's best-selling Magic Tree House has now turned over 45 on the series-o-meter and is still going strong. Pope's latest, Magic Tree House #45: A Crazy Day with Cobras (A Stepping Stone Book(TM)) (Random House, 2011) has all the right stuff to keep this series going--well delineated and likable characters, a unique but historically solid setting, plenty of adventures for the two youngsters on a mission, and a comfortable ending with a familiar feel as the two return back to the same spot and moment in good old Frog Creek. It's a formula that works here and will probably work as long as Mary Pope Osborne continues to come up with fascinating places in time and space for her heroes to visit. Sal Murdocca's delightful retro-style drawings and an abundance of incidental learning embedded in the story raise this solid beginning chapter series above the ordinary fantasy adventure.

For further information, pair this one with its companion book, Magic Tree House Research Guide #23: Snakes and Other Reptiles: A Nonfiction Companion to Magic Tree House #45: A Crazy Day with Cobras (A Stepping Stone Book(TM)) (Random House, 2011) by Osborne and sister Natalie Pope Boyce, to extend the fantasy fun into the wonder of nature science.

Last Journey: Crispin-The End of Time by Avi

"If you can go no farther than where you
are, God has shown you your destiny."

In the final book of his trilogy, which began with the Newbery-winning novel The Crispin: Cross of Lead, author Avi takes up the story of the orphaned Crispin as he searches out his fate in medieval France and England. A boy with "no name," "no home, no kin, no place," Crispin finds himself again alone after the death of his fatherly mentor Bear, with only the disfigured girl Troth as a companion and friend. Crispin and Troth know only that they are somewhere in France, unable to speak the language in a land at war with their native land, England. At last, cold and desperately hungry, they ask for help at a small convent. There they are taken in grudgingly until Troth's skills with medicinal plants restores the abbess to health. Troth finds a place as apothecarian there and chooses to stay, but Crispin reluctantly leaves her behind, still following Bear's command to go to Iceland, a land he promised is without kings or lords, a land of freedom.

Crispin knows only to walk toward the north, not knowing where or what Iceland might be, and in the forest he again begs for food from a band of traveling musicians. Because he plays the recorder, Crispin is taken in by the troop, but soon, in a baptism of blood in which he is ordered to strip a dying robbery victim of his purse, he learns the group's true vocation as thieves and fears that he has lost his immortal soul as well as his freedom by his part in the murder. Still, the group claims to be heading for the English-held walled city of Calais to play at a rich merchant's wedding feast and then to find passage on to England, and Crispin remains fearfully with them, hoping to get closer to his final destination. Their servant boy Owen manages to warn him that they are totally untrustworthy and Crispin soon learns that indeed they plan to hand him over for hanging to bribe the city's guards to let them escape to England.

Crispin knows that he must escape and promises to take Owen with him, and in a stolen moment in the marketplace, finds an Icelandic fisherman who needs a hand for the voyage back to his homeland. Watched virtually every moment by the members of the troop, Crispin, now a marked man, must find a way out of the walled and guarded city and onto the small boat before it sails at dawn on the day after the wedding. But, as the grizzled fisherman tells him, Iceland is not the haven that Bear had promised, instead a place of sometime cruelty and unrelenting hardship. Still, Crispin faces only death in his present condition, and he takes some comfort in remembering the words of Bear, that when you can go no farther, God is showing you your true destiny.

Avi is a supreme storyteller, and the conclusion to his trilogy, Crispin: The End of Time (Balzer & Bray, 2010), is a hold-your-breath page-turner of an adventure story. Having developed his characters and fleshed out his theme of personal freedom in the previous two books, including Book 2, Crispin: At the Edge of the World multiple-award-winning author Avi here is free to pursue a thumping-good plot in the best tradition of Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Mark Twain. Although the earlier books are equally deserving, this last book can stand on its own, seamlessly bringing the reader abreast of the current story as a beautifully balanced thriller, a piece of superbly atmospheric historical fiction, and a deep exploration of the series' ethical theme of personal responsibility in the pursuit of individual liberty. As Kirkus Reviews puts it, "Thrilling and beautifully wrought."

Duck and Cover: Countdown by Deborah Wiles

*EXTRA CREDIT*

WATCH PRESIDENT KENNEDY'S ADDRESS ON TELEVISION.

THIS EVENING AT 7:00 P.M.

A seemingly ordinary assignment for a sixth-grade class, this notation in Franny Chapman's notebook is an early warning of an event that changes everything. It is Monday, October 22, 1962, and as her family assembles around their black-and-white TV, what they hear is Kennedy's Cuban missile crisis address.

Franny's school, Camp Springs Elementary, near Andrews Air Force Base where her father is stationed, has already been designated an official fallout shelter, and just Friday the sunny October recess was split with an air raid siren which terrified the students, who hurried to practice their just-learned "Duck and Cover" skills.

Now Franny feels as if her safe and secure world is falling away beneath her feet. When she rushes home, hoping for reassurance from her mom, she finds her away and her Uncle Ott, his World War I medals all pinned askew on his baggy sweater, surrounded by survival equipment and digging a fallout shelter in the front yard of their home. Franny and her little third-grade-brother, who carries his much-read copy of Our Friend the Atom everywhere, are drafted by her distraught uncle to dig up the yard, in full view of her friends and the scandalized neighbors. In his frenzy, Uncle Ott collapses, unconscious, leaving Franny to deal with the situation until her college-age sister and mother return.

Uncle Ott recovers at the base hospital, but the loss of security seems to reverberate through Franny's life. Her little brother feels betrayed by the friendly atom. Her older sister Jo Ellen receives mysterious letters which she hurriedly conceals, and when Franny and her best friend Margie, playing Nancy Drew, purloin one of the letters, they find it contains a message which appears to their eleven-year-old eyes unintelligible.

SNCC
4043945593

CORE
2029353932

EBENEZER
9432843

Then Jo Ellen stops coming home, and Franny's mom is evasive, saying only that she is staying with a friend in the dorm, working on projects. Franny senses that her mother and sister have had a major disagreement, and she intuits that that it has something to do with that coded message. Margie is convinced that the letter proves that Franny's sister is a spy, one of those "Kommonists" Uncle Ott raves about, and passes on her theory to their friends at school. Little brother Drew stops eating and is clearly frightened, her dad is abruptly put on alert and sent on missions he cannot describe to them, and despite the familiarity of their meatloaf-on-Monday dinners and her round of daily chores and homework, middle-child Franny feels the growing distance between the members of her family and the loss of her best friend acutely.

Deborah Wiles newest, Countdown (Scholastic, 2010), the first in her proposed Sixties Trilogy, shows sheltered Air Force brat Franny Chapman as she suddenly discovers the outside world in events which crack open the smooth surface of her comfortable life. With the threat of nuclear war over her head, even small events make her feel lost--a teacher's look of disapproval, a fight with her best friend which sends both to the principal, and her first boy-girl Halloween party. All normal events seem caught up in the events of the struggles of the Cold War which sends her dad off on secret flights and the civil rights movement which draws her sister away. Described as "documentary fiction," interspersed with news accounts, popular songs, photos, advertisements, and quotes from world leaders and iconic personalities of the early sixties, this semi-autobiographical story provides middle readers with a historical education and a real-life look at a child coming of age in times as turbulent as our own.

Franny's family and friendships shift and are re-formed to adjust to the times as this story unfolds, and the reader comes to see that humans are capable of great resilience and flexibility in the face of new threats. It is perhaps ironic that among the documentary material Wiles presents to bring the 1960s to life within this book are the shrewd but insightful words sent to President Kennedy from an unlikely prophet, Nikita Krushchev, in October of 1962:

WE AND YOU OUGHT NOT PULL ON THE ENDS OF A ROPE IN WHICH ARE TIED THE KNOTS OF WAR.

BECAUSE THE MORE THE TWO OF US PULL, THE TIGHTER THE KNOT WILL BE TIED.

Wiles' Countdown is a serious yet reassuring look at the way members of one family, all ages, met an earlier generational challenge. Her characters live and breathe before us, as real as yesterday's memories, and her description of 1960s family life--seemingly self-contained within its world of early bedtimes, pink kitchen appliances and pear salads--is spot-on for the period. But the real value of this novel is in its message that, despite threats from without and within, people can choose to live bravely in their own time and make of it what they will.

Happy Endings: Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm

I blame Hollywood. Mama's watched so many pictures that she believes in happy endings. She's been waiting her whole life to find someone who'll sweep her off her feet and take care of her.

Me? I think life's more like that cartoon by Mr. Disney--The Three Little Pigs. Some big bad wolf's always trying to blow down your house.

It's 1935, deep Depression days. Turtle's mama favors Shirley Temple's perky optimism, but Turtle's patron saint is Little Orphan Annie. Sure, she doesn't have a dog like Sandy, but she has a cat, Smokey, with a singed tail, courtesy of some mean boys, who's just as loyal and just as smart. But despite her pretty mama's ability to find a succession of men friends, all of them love her and leave her, and Turtle has about given up on Daddy Warbucks to come to her rescue.

But just as Mama lands a housekeeping job with a rich lady and hooks up with Archie, a salesman that even Smokey the cat falls for, Turtle's frail hopes for a happy ending fall through again. Her crotchety boss hates kids and Mama decides to send her to live with her estranged family in Key West.

Key West in 1935 is no tourist paradise. Even the thick-skinned Turtle, used to being the bullied and tormented "housekeeper's daughter," finds it less than welcoming. "Truth is," she thinks, "the place looks like a broken chair that's been left out in the sun to rot." Her worn and harried Aunt Minnie is not thrilled when she shows up: she already has three raggle-taggle boys, Kermit, Beans, and little Buddy, who is usually missing his pants, and her energy and the family's budget is clearly stretched to the limit already. The boys are no less underwhelmed at the sight of their new girl cousin, but Aunt Minnie makes room for her, and in her aunt's quiet strength and determination Turtle senses a kindred spirit.

So, too, is sponge fisherman Slow Poke, whose grey eyes are strangely like her own, who occasionally hires her as a hand on his boat and who also likes to pretend that the two of them are Terry and Pat from the comic strip Terry and the Pirates, entertaining her with tales of pirate treasure to be found in the Keys. Reluctantly, the boys begin to allow her to tag along as a non-member on their almost daily rounds as the Diaper Gang.

"We watch of babies," says Kermit. "Bad ones."

"You ever take care of good babies?" I ask.

"Ain't no such thing."

Girls can't belong to the Diaper Gang, but there's one job the boys are glad to give her--feeding lunch to their ancient, disabled, and undeniably mean Nana Philly. Turtle is shocked to learn from her caretaker, Bea, that Nana Philly is her own grandmother and that her mama, newly pregnant ten years before and despairing of her boyfriend's support, was forced to leave Key West by her own mother. Still, Turtle is drawn to the old woman, who despite her habit of throwing her lunch on the floor every time it's offered, seems to hide some family secrets in her shrewd glances. Sticking to the job, Turtle slyly bests the old woman at her own game, finally earning grudging smiles every time she appears.

And it is Smokey who adopts Nana Philly as well and who leads her to an amazing discovery. Hidden in Nana Philly's termite-ridden piano, Turtle discovers something better than Daddy Warbucks' fortune--a gold coin and a crude map which says

This being Where Blacke Caesar putte His Treaffure.

This might just be the key to that happy ending her Mama needs, and Turtle even enlists the Diaper Gang to help commandeer a boat to a tiny nearby key, with nothing but a crumbling cistern, a sagging shack, and, they hope, a marker which will show them where to dig for Black Caesar's pirate gold.

And they do find that marker and many feet below in the sand they find a chest that is indeed filled with gold. But their joy soon turns to terror. Their boat has broken its moorings and they are marooned. Still, the area is a favorite of fishermen and spongers, there is water in the cistern, and they have good reason to hope for a rescue. But then Beans points out the weather signs that have gone unnoticed. A storm is approaching and it looks to be a bad one.

Indeed, it is the historic Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, and this time Turtle is sure that there is no happy ending ahead for her.

Newbery Award-winner Jennifer L. Holms (for Our Only May Amelia (Harper Trophy Books) and Penny from Heaven) knows how to create crackerjack characters (even a cameo of Papa Ernest Hemingway), each so indelibly drawn that they seem like people you've always known, quirky, imperfect, but fully human. Her impeccable storytelling skills sweep the plot along at what at first appears a leisurely, meandering pace but which draws to a suspenseful climax that seems the mythical happy ending. But like one of Beethoven's symphonies, that false ending is only building to the real resolution, surprising but oh, so satisfying, that is the hallmark of the master storyteller. As the writer for Kirkus Reviews puts it, Holm's Turtle in Paradise (Random House, 2010) is "sweet, funny and superb." I couldn't say it better.