Born to Be Wild: The Wild Queen--The Days and Nights of Mary Queen of Scots by Caroline Meyer

"I was the cause of my father's death.

My father had badly wanted a son who could be the next king. When he married my mother, a French duchess, he already had three illegitimate sons, but by law a bastard could not inherit the Scottish throne. My mother bore him two more sons; both infants died. I was my father’s last hope, and when the news reached him of the birth of a lass—a girl—that bitter disappointment was more than he could endure. Had I been a boy, he would still be alive.

From my earliest days I have too often found myself at the center of disastrous events. That was the first. My birth killed my father, and I became queen of Scotland."

This dramatic story, likely apocryphally attributed to the anti-feminist John Knox, embodies the perils of constructing historical accounts of early queens, about whom what is known must be regarded as questionable, written as it in the interests of enemies and succesors. Nevertheless, it is believable that this Queen Mary felt herself born under a dark star, but a woman with a mission to preserve her embattled realm.

Crowned Queen of Scotland as a nine-month's old babe, the only legal heir to the throne, Mary's French mother quickly had her betrothed to young Prince Edward, heir to the throne of Henry VIII in hopes of preventing an English invasion and takeover of Scotland. But when little Edward died, Mary's mother, a member of the powerful Guise family in France, then sought a new alliance, betrothing her to Francoise, Dauphin of France, two years her junior. While her mother remained in Scotland to rule as regent for the child queen, at the age of five, Mary was dispatched to the court of Henry II to be educated and prepared to be the queen of France. Mary became Marie, quickly learned French, became a favorite of the King of France, and enjoyed the support of her Guise grandparents and uncles, and she and the delicate Dauphin became close, more like big sister and little brother than future consorts.

Mary and the still immature Francois were married in 1558. Marie gloried in the role of queen of two countries, but when her frail child-husband died suddenly, young Mary found herself in the powerless role of the virgin dowager Queen of France. To escape the swirling and dangerous politics of the French court and rumors of a forced marriage to the various eligible royalty of Europe, Mary boldly took matters in her own hands and determined to return to Scotland to rule as Queen of Scots.

But Queen Mary found herself equally imperiled by the religious and power politics of Britain. As a devout Roman Catholic, she had a powerful enemy in both John Knox, the extreme Calvinist leader in her own country, and in her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England, herself equally threatened by Catholic factions within the nobility of England. Realizing that she needed a powerful consort to help her control her own warring nobility, Mary finally married her twenty-year-old cousin, the bold and handsome Henry Stuart, who had the virtue, at over six feet, of being slightly taller than the regal Mary, and the vice of being already a notorious womanizer. The passionate marriage, which resulted in the birth of one son, James, soon turned into a battle royal, a miniature version of the state of the country itself.

When Henry Stuart's residence was blown up and he was found dead in the garden, the rumors flew that Mary had had him murdered. The country was split along lines of blood loyalty and religion, and unable to regain control, Mary first sought support in a hasty marriage with James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, but was eventually forced to flee to England, petitioning the protection of her cousin Elizabeth. Feeling threatened by the loyalties to Mary of English Catholics and Mary's own claim to the throne of England as the legitimate great-granddaughter of England's Henry VIII, Elizabeth had her imprisoned and finally after eighteen years confined in the Tower of London, and, finally tried for the murder of her husband Henry Stuart, Mary was dramatically beheaded in 1587.

Carolyn Meyer's forthcoming The Wild Queen: The Days and Nights of Mary, Queen of Scots (Young Royals) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), is the latest in her notable and best-selling The Young Royals series, skillfully building a taut, engrossing piece of historical fiction out of the known and legendary events of this doomed queen's life. As in the lives of modern women leaders, young adult readers cannot help but come to a deeper understanding of the gender, marital, social, and religious politics which shaped the rule and fate of this early female ruler and the parallel story of her cousin and sometimes enemy Elizabeth I of England. Both red-haired, intelligent, and strong willed, these women played a pivotal roles in the beginnings of the modern era and all that came after, and Meyer's The Wild Queen, in its gripping style and historical veracity, (insofar as that is possible) sheds much light upon the forces that faced these young royals and shaped the western world.

Ironically, this Mary, as one of the two queens of this era of Britain, has the last word in history: Elizabeth the Virgin Queen, having died without issue, Mary's son, James, as the only legitimate heir, succeeded her as King James I of the now united kingdom, which ensured that Mary, Queen of Scots, became the direct progenitor of British monarchs to this day.

Carolyn Meyer's Young Royals books include the stories of Mary's cousin, Mary, Bloody Mary,of her French mother-in-law, Duchessina: A Novel of Catherine de' Medici (Young Royals), and of that other doomed French queen whose forced political marriage resulted in great historical changes, The Bad Queen: Rules and Instructions for Marie-Antoinette. Like these earlier works, Meyer includes an appendix with sources for further study on Mary, Queen of Scots.

Stowaway Princess: Beauty's Daughter: The Story of Hermione and Helen of Troy by Carolyn Meyer

"They will sail to Troy, and there will be much bloodshed," Zethus predicted. "Menelaus will certainly want to get Helen back. As for the goddesses Hera and Athena will be on the side of the Greeks, but Aphrodite will help Paris as much as she  can. The war is likely to last for a long time."

"Where is Queen Helen? Where is my brother?" I shouted.

The boatmen stared uneasily at their feet. "They're with the Trojan prince. They boarded the ship with the figure of Aphrodite and Eros on the prow. They sailed eastward."

Eleven-year-old Hermione has always known that her beautiful mother, Helen, Queen of Sparta, has little interest in her, but when  the queen falls in love with the visiting Prince Paris and flees to Troy, taking Hermione's beloved little brother with her, Hermione determines that she will stowaway on a ship in her father's fleet and follow King Menelaus and his Greek allies to war on the shores of the great walled city of Troy.

As her loyal friend and servant Zethus prophesied, the war drags on for ten years. Hermione and her cousin, Orestes, to whom she was betrothed by their grandfather, grow up in the Greek camp on the shores of Troy.  When at last Zethus designs the Wooden Horse, the Greeks  gain entrance to the Trojan city. Paris is killed by Achilles, Achilles is killed by an archer's arrow to his vulnerable heel, and Menelaus reclaims his Helen. But Orestes and Hermione are separated as the fleets depart for their homes, and Menalaus rewards Achilles' son Pyrrhus for his service by promising Hermione to him as his wife.

Longing for Orestes and unhappily married to the brutal Pyrrhus, Hermione is miserable in his long-abandoned and shabby palace at Pharsalos. She loves only Orestes, but when she fails to bear the son Pyrrhus demands of her, he spitefully takes her two handmaidens as concubines who give him a son and daughter.

But Hermione has good fortune in her bad fortune. The loyal Zethus finds her, and when Pyrrhus is killed by a rival, with the assistance of the god Hermes they escape to the coast where she learns that Orestes has arrived at home to discover that his unfaithful mother, Clytemnestra, has murdered his father Agamemnon.  In a rage Orestes kills his mother in retribution and, tortured by the Furies for the sin of  matricide, loses his mind and his memories and is imprisoned on a distant island.

Still, the resourceful Hermione believes that she can find her love and restore him to health, if the gods will it, and she sets forth on her own quest, in Carolyn Meyer's forthcoming Beauty's Daughter: The Story of Hermione and Helen of Troy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).  Meyer, the queen of queen fiction, has a talent for telling a compelling personal love story, while taking the reader deeply into early Hellenic history  in which the story is set.  The story of Helen of Troy is the world's first great romance tale, the story of the stunningly beautiful but unfaithful queen who claimed herself to be Aphrodite's pawn and whose face "launched a thousand ships" as chronicled in Homer's Iliad.  Meyer tells that epic story tangentially as she focuses on Helen's unloved, red-haired daughter Hermione, whose own romance, in the face of unfortunate history and the mischief of the gods, offers a counterpoint of devotion and resilience to her mother's fickle infidelities, making the self-reliant Hermione the center of the swirling events of the world's first great love story and first great war.

Middle readers who grew up with Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians adventure series and into young adult status will find some familiar Olympian characters but a different sort of historical fantasy in Carolyn Meyers forthcoming Olympian romance novel.

Other notable young royal novels by Carolyn Meyer include The Wild Queen: The Days and Nights of Mary, Queen of Scots (Young Royals) (see review here), Mary, Bloody Mary, The Bad Queen: Rules and Instructions for Marie-Antoinette (Young Royals), Doomed Queen Anne: A Young Royals Book, and The Royal Diaries: Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess, Russia, 1914.

American Gothic: The May Queen Murders by Sarah Jude

Now, Ivy girl, you gotta know there's bad out in them woods, and the worst kind of bad Rowan's Glen has ever known is Birch Markle. Things weren't ever right with the Markle boy. There was no real reason for the things he done, but sometimes, well, evil's like that.

Like Brigadoon, the legendary Scots village that appears once a century, Rowan's Glen is a place out of sync with time, a late-nineteenth century-type settlement, set back in the Ozarks, with Scots-Irish folks with feet in two centuries. And that's the way Ivy Middleton likes it.

The kids at the consolidated high school roll their eyes and call them "The Cult," or "the hillbillies," or "the hippies," but Ivy loves the long ruffled skirts she and her best friend and cousin Heather make and the Glen's superstitions and spooky folktales her granny used to talk about, that is, before she stopped talking at all.  The Glen is a place where a death in the family means all the clocks in the house must be stopped, where the glimpse of a "shadow self" forewarns of death, and where little kids are warned to stay on the roads, out of the woods, and be home by twilight for fear of Birch Markle, Rowan Glen's own bogeyman who seems to choose one girl in each generation for his own blood sacrifice.

But this spring Heather is different. Ivy is used to their sharing all their secrets, but suddenly Heather has a secret she says she can't share, one that has her slipping out at night, and meeting with someone in the old stable by lanternlight. Ivy, too, realizes that her feelings are now different for her old playmate Rook Meriwether, whose touch is now "like a dandelion scattering inside her, seeds full of possibility." And now Rowan's Glen's leaders have decided it's time to revive the old May Day celebration and crown a May Queen, even though the old ones whisper that two girls, twenty years apart, were found brutally murdered on the day they were were chosen Queen of the May.

"He comes for girls with secrets," Aunt Rue tells Ivey, "you know, Terra McAvoy and my girl. And you. Nothing can stop him."

As the day approaches, favorite dogs go missing and are found mutilated in the woods. And when Heather is chosen to be the new May Queen. Ivy feels that she must protect her friend, her cousin, by following her on her night wanderings, despite the reports that Birch Markle is again heard screaming in the woods, the stench of death about the wild skins he wears. Rook and some of his friends agree to help Ivy protect Heather, but soon Ivy discovers her cousin drowned in the pond in the woods. And then they stumble upon what a cache of old dry bones, a bullet through the skull, crammed in the hollow of a tree.

Whose bones are they? And who is stalking the young girls of Rowan's Glen? And why?

Sarah Jude's forthcoming The May Queen Murders (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) is pure American Gothic, filled with rich symbolism of Light and Dark, Good and Evil, Life and Death. Ivey's granny's self-imposed silence is like the community refusal to speak about the monstrous power among them, and Rook's quiet battle against the alien, poisonous belladonna shrubs that he doggedly roots out each spring.

Readers who like an atmospheric tale will find this one an engrossing read. Jude builds an eerie ambiance which hangs over Rowan's Glen like the spring fog as the story moves inexorably to its hair-raising conclusion, one whose terror is tempered by the almost other-worldly setting and the characters who insist, in true terror-tale typecasting, to go, against all warnings, down that twilight road, into that abandoned stable, or through those mist-shrouded woods to what awaits beyond.

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.

Brilliant! Moonlight on the Magic Flute by Mary Pope Osborne

"Now on your next mission, Merlin wants you to bring happiness to millions of people," said Kathleen."

"You must seek out a brilliant artist. Merlin wants you to put that artist on the right path" said Teddy, "to share his or her gift with the world."

When Annie spots Merlin's emissaries Kathleen and Teddy waiting for them at the edge of the Frog Creek woods, Jack and his sister know that they are about to take the Magic Tree House forth on another exciting "Merlin Mission." The two magical messengers tell Jack that the Wand of Dianthus, which they won in an earlier mission, will again serve them well.

"The Wand of Dianthus changes into a silver flute," instructs Teddy. "Just blow into the flute, and while one of you plays, the other must make up a song. Whatever you sing will come true."

Soon Jack and Annie find themselves elaborately bewigged, Jack dressed in knee breeches and Annie in an elaborate hoop-skirted ball gown, clutching an invitation from Her Imperial Majesty Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria and Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, for a gala performance and audience with the Queen herself in the Schoenbrun Palace. The date is October 13, 1762.

As they hitch a ride with a friendly coachman to the palace gate, a very small boy, attired in an elegant blue velvet suit and wearing a tiny sword, takes a liking to Jack and begs him to explore the palace grounds with him. Jack and Annie are polite to the talkative little boy, but feel they must hurry into the palace to to complete their mission.

Once inside, they join the line of guests waiting to be presented to the Empress. A helpful girl named Nannerle gives them instructions on how they must curtsy and bow to the Queen and her royal children and then back out of the chamber, always facing the imperial family. For Jack, however, things don't go well. His deep bow causes his unruly wig to fall off and in trying to retrieve it, he falls down, and his attempt to back out of the room gracefully ends with his smacking into the wall. Jack's embarrassment is increased by the giggles of the royal children, especially the annoying little boy in the blue suit who is sitting on the lap of the Empress herself. "Who is that fool?" giggles one of the princesses as Jack makes his red-faced escape.

As Jack tries to restore his dignity (and wig) and he and Annie begin to discuss how to locate the palace artists, they hear a familiar voice.

"Jack of Frog Creek!" came a high little voice. "I have been looking everywhere for you!"

"Hi," said Annie. "What's your name?"

"Wolfie!" cried the little boy with the sword.

Wolfie begs Jack and Annie to play with him in the palace gardens which beckon beyond the salon's doors, but they explain that they are on a mission to find a brilliant artist.

"Wait!" said Wolfie. I know someone who is very brilliant! ME!"

Fat chance, Jack thinks, and he and Annie try to slip away as Wolfie's big sister Nannerle shepherds him away to find their father.

"You know you have a big responsibility tonight," she says.

"No, No, No!" wails Wolfie. "I never get to PLAY!"

But as Jack and Annie begin to search the palace for resident artists, they hear a commotion and realize that Nannerle has lost her little brother. Coming to her aid, they reason that the little boy might have gone outside on his own to play, and the two venture out into the moonlit gardens to search for him. Strange animal sounds surround them, and when Jack encounters a huge bear, he realizes that mischievous Wolfie must have freed the wild animals from the Imperial Zoo. Pulling out the magic flute, Jack begins to play as Annie begins a song which mesmerizes the animals into following them through the dark woods. At last they find little Wolfie, frozen in fear before a wild leopard, but bravely brandishing his little sword. Annie continues to sing and leads the animals back into their enclosure, to Wolfie's delight. "Music is magic!" he laughs. "I love music!"

Back in the palace, Jack and Annie find their way to the Hall of Mirrors, where an important event seems to be about to take place. To their amazement they see little Wolfie approach the dais, bow to great applause from the crowd, and take his seat at the harpsichord, where he proceeds to play the song from Jack's magic flute beautifully.

Her Imperial Majesty stepped forward. "Thank you for your brilliant performance, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart!" she said. "We have witnessed a great event here tonight. I know we will all remember it in the years to come when our young Wolfgang Mozart brings joy to all the world with his music!"

Mary Pope Osborne has not lost her touch in this new entry in her best-selling series, Magic Tree House #41: Moonlight on the Magic Flute (A Stepping Stone Book(TM)). Writing like a pro for her intended audience, Osborne continues to combine fantasy and historical information within kid-pleasing adventures perfect for beginning chapter readers. As her "More Facts about Mozart and His Time" addendum points out, the little Wolfgang did indeed climb into the welcoming lap of the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire and wow the crowd with his virtuoso keyboard talent, and like Jack in the final chapter, kids Googling Wolfgang Mozart will be delighted to learn that

"Mozart's last great opera was called The Magic Flute."

Slipping the Scaffold! Wild Rover No More (A Bloody Jack Adventure) by L. A. Meyer

THE BOSTON PATRIOT
Nov.10, 1809--Special Edition

NOTORIOUS PYRATE AND BRITISH SPY JACK FABER HANGED

THE CONDEMNED SHOWED NO REMORSE AT END OF LIFE.

Protesting her Innocence to the last, the Criminal Jacky Faber, also known as Bloody Jack, the Scourge of the Caribbean; La Belle Jeune Fille Sans Merci; the Lily of the West; and the Belle of Botany Bay was hanged today by the order of the State of Massachusetts, having been Convicted of High Treason against the United States. Incriminating Documents concerting detailed plans of the Fortifications at Fort McHenry had been found in her possession.

The beauteous and bold Jacky Faber, still only a lass of nineteen, has sailed both oceans as a privateer, amassed a fortune as head of Faber Shipping Enterprises, posed for a famous scantily-clad portrait painted by Goya, flatboated down the Mississippi, and undertaken various undercover espionage for assorted governments, seems to have come to the end of the road.

It  had seemed things were going well for the wily Jacky. Having vowed to have nothing further to do with men and live single, amassing an even larger fortune from legal merchant trade, Jacky is unexpectedly reconciled with her love, Jaimy Fletcher. But when jealous conspirators plant a map of Fort McHenry in a British diplomatic pouch with Jacky's name on it, she becomes a traitor hunted down by her state and country. But Jacky always takes care to know where the back door is, and, disguised in her well-worn midshipman's sailor's togs, makes an escape in her sailboat Morning Star and, leaving Boston Bay behind. makes for the port of Plymouth in a howling gale.

In Plymouth Jacky looks about for a job that will allow for deep cover and, as Annabelle Leigh, she takes employment as a governess. But a snoopy Plymouth postmaster reads her mail, and soon the federals on on her trail again. By chance, Jacky encounters a traveling circus troupe and hires on, using the skill she exhibited during her Paris sojourn, as Princess Natasha Annasova Romanoff, Aerialist. Garishly made up and costumed in spangled tights, high on the tightrope wire, she feels safe for the moment as the circus continues its travels toward Provincetown.

But Jacky's fabled luck seems to fail her this time, and she is discovered and returned to Boston, summarily tried as a British spy, and slated for hanging as soon as her scaffold is completed.

I sigh and look about me. All my thoughts of escape have been in vain. There is a lock on my shackle, a lock on the cell door. I have no metal to fashion a key. No, I am truly lost. This is one cage that Jacky Faber will not get out of... until, that is, they take me out for the final time.

"All right, boys, let's give 'er a try," I hear one of the carpenters say outside my window. There is the rasp of a lever being thrown and the sound of something falling with a whump.

They have completed the gallows and are testing the trap that will fall from beneath my feet.

I crawl into bed, my ankle chain rattling on the bedstead as I do it.

Oh, was I ever so bad as to deserve this?

But while Jacky Faber is bravely composing herself to meet her maker, she has friends hard at work to help her yet again cheat the hangman, in the rousing conclusion to L. A. Meyer's just published, series-concluding Wild Rover No More: Being the Last Recorded Account of the Life &Times of Jacky Faber (Bloody Jack Adventures) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).

Meyer's characters are crisp and true to the times, the plotting is gripping but never improbable, and Jacky Faber herself is a wondrous heroine, fearless and intelligent, a strong woman born out of her time who does not scruple to use her beauty, quick wits, and endless energy to find adventure all of over the globe. A fine fictional character with the combined qualities of such historic femmes as Cleopatra of the Nile, Mary Queen of Scots, pirate queen Anney Bonney, spy Mata Hari, and exotic danseuse and World War II spy Josephine Baker, Jacky's rip-roaring escapades never fail in this twelfth book of the much lauded Bloody Jack Adventures series. Says Kirkus in their starred review, "Meyer offers an impressively accomplished heroine, suspense as taut as a hangman's rope and a satisfying conclusion. A solid and sentimental entry in an underrated series."

Fare ye well, and a fair wind to your back, Jacky Faber!

Game Boy Caper: Mac B. KID SPY: Mac Cracks the Code by Mac Barnett

The lights dimmed. The previews started. Craig leaned whispered, "Hey, buddy, can I get that Dr. Pepper?"

When Craig opened the can, there was this little spritzing sound.

The usher came to our row with a flashlight and said, "Kid, will you come with me?"

My mom stood up. "This is ridiculous...."

"It's just... there's a phone call for this kid,." the usher said.

Craig was dumbfounded. "Who would call him?" I knew who.

It was the Queen of England.

The usher explains that there not-very-friendly lady with an accent on the pay telephone in the lobby who demanded to speak with Mac.

"Mac, I need you to leave that theater immediately and come to England. A car will arrive for you in five minutes."

Unknown to all except Queen Elizabeth and the higher echelons of the worldwide counterspy operatives, Mac B. is needed elsewhere. British counterspies have captured an enemy spy's underwear, and with ultraviolet light discovered a code word, DRUBBALUBA, written on the label. A British team of crack cryptologists and the world's supercomputers have failed to decode it, so of course the Queen of England has sent for Mac B., KID SPY!

Queen Liz confines Mac B. at a desk in a locked room to work on the code, where after he comes up with one code-breaking possibility, he gets restless and climbs out the palace window in search of some respectable life-threatening spy guy adventures.

Little does Mac B. know that the code key word is the winning solution to the Video Game World Championship match which has been stolen by Mac's arch-nemesis, the double agent KGB Guy. Mac's case takes him on a chase to Paris to consult with the French president and on to Tokyo to meet the Emperor of Japan who uses his anagram skills to send him on to Nintendo headquarters in Kyoto where Mac finally cracks the code with his trademark spycraft tool, his Gameboy.

In his fourth book in series, Mac Cracks the Code (Mac B., Kid Spy 4) (Orchard Books, 2019), illustrated in his trademark cartoons by Mike Lowery, best-selling author Mac Barnett unleashes another wild and crazy plot starring his intrepid kid spy. Winner of two Caldecott Honor medals for his quirky work with off-beat illustrator Jon Klaasen, Mac Barnett's latest will be sure to please fans of Dav Pilkey's The Adventures of Captain Underpants and Dog Man: The Supa Epic Collection: From the Creator of Captain Underpants (Dog Man 1-6 Boxed Set). I mean, how many characters out there share their licorice with the Queen of England?

See more top-selling giggle fest books by Mac Barnett here.

Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience: Lost Voices by Sarah Porter

It only made sense that the absolute violet blackness all around her must be death. It was cold and silky, and it went nowhere....

After a while, though, she began to realize that the perfect darkness was moving. It was moving faster than she ever could have imagined, swirling past her a amazing speed. Then it wasn't the darkness that was moving. She was the one. She could curve in long, dizzy sweeps.

It was a living, leaping darkness, full of shapes that were just as free as she was. Luce knew at that moment that she'd never experienced anything nearly as beautiful as this power and this gracefulness. And at that moment of deepest joy, Luce began to hear the sound.

The closest word for it was music. She thought the beauty of it must be more than she could bear.

Abandoned by her mother and orphaned with the death of her kind but irresponsible father, Lucette is sent to stay with her uncle, a dark, often drunken and cruel recluse on the wild coast of Alaska. When he finally assaults her and leaves her lying on a cliff above the raging sea, she finds herself falling toward the sea, there somehow to be transformed into another being. Undead but not exactly human, Luce realizes that she has been somehow metamorphosed into a mermaid like the those of the tribe led by the strong and beautiful Caterina, who pulls her from the deep, shares her own breath with her, and explains the world which she has entered.

It first to Luce it seems paradise found, a circle of fantastically beautiful girls who care for her, welcome her, and teach her how to live beneath the sea, nurturing her in a perfect society of sisters, all of them sharing the same human history of indifference and abuse.

But slowly Luce learns that the tribe has another mission, to seek out passing ships, enchant their sailors and passengers with their otherworldly music, and lead them to their deaths, all in revenge for the abuse done to young girls in their world. Luce, as a novice, a metaskaza, goes along on their next hunt, and hearing the superb song of their queen, Caterina, she begins to sing, too, discovering that she has a music within her which already rivals the dominating song of Caterina.

But there is something left in Luce, something of humanity's better nature, which feels sympathy, and even the beginnings of forgiveness, for the people her songs help enchant and draw to their deaths, and she is appalled at the ruthlessness with which the tribe pursues to the death the survivors who resist their siren call. At last she is even compelled to save one drowning boy, dragging him ashore on an island, a thing altogether forbidden by the Timakh, the mermaidian law. And then she secretly witnesses Caterina herself, consorting physically with a beautifully young man before she drowns him, an unthinkable and fatal rupture of the Timakh in their own queen.

And when a new metaskaza, Annais, comes into the group, the close society begins to unravel. Annais is vain and shallow, pilfering the jewels and fine clothes from off the corpses of those she chooses to murder purely for their finery, conspiring to force a schism aimed at the overthrow of Caterina, and Luce comes to see that that spark of humanity which she cannot expunge from her own soul will not allow her to remain in that fallen society.

There has been enough death,, Luce thought. Enough death to last until the world rolls away and leaves the sun forever.

Many authors, most recently Stephanie Meyer in her Twilight series, have attempted to use the timeless tale of the mortal character forced to choose between immortality and power and the divine spark of the human capacity for mercy and forgiveness. It's a difficult task, requiring the author first to create a credible setting that is not exactly of this world, a "middle earth" (or in this case a middle sea ) and then to introduce that fatal choice believably into the plot for his or her protagonists.

In this regard, Sarah Porter's forthcoming Lost Voices (Lost Voices (Trilogy)) (Harcourt, 2011) succeeds in a way Meyer's blockbuster best-selling romance series does not. More the primal tale of fallen angels rather than Meyer's daemon lover reprise, Porter's novel, graced with seductive lyrical writing, beautiful and seemingly effortless in its descriptive passages, does not flinch nor punt (as does Meyer) when it comes to the ultimate moral choice she places before her character. This is perhaps not a book for everyone: there is a depth of theme here which also requires a heavy measure of that "willing suspension of disbelief" required of the fantasy quest. Readers will finish the book with a feeling of dissatisfaction that Luce's coming-of-age transformation is not completely realized until they learn that this is but the first book of a planned trilogy, Porter wisely choosing not to issue the full story in one vast unwieldy volume.

Much depends upon what is yet to be written, but Lost Voices (Lost Voices (Trilogy)) offers an impressive debut and much promise.

From the Heart: A Season of Gifts by Richard Peck

You could see from here the house was haunted. It hadn't had a lick of paint since VJ Day, maybe the war before that. Only the snowball bushes crowding its foundations seemed to hold the place up.

At night lights moved from room to room. Every evening just at dusk a light bobbed down the walk to the cobhouse and the privy behind and back again.

My little sister Ruth Ann couldn't take her eyes off the place.

"It's like Halloween here in August. I betcha there are spooks inside that house."

And for twelve-year-old Bob that privy becomes his own private house of horrors. Scooped up by the village bullies, led by the massive Roscoe Burdick, they "initiate" him to life in Piatt County, Illinois, by trussing him up and playing water polo with him in the funky brown waters of the local pond and then hanging him, upside down and naked, in a web of fishing line inside that privy, to be eventually found and rescued by the equally frightening Mrs. Dowdel, the nearly ninety-year-old resident of the "haunted house." Mrs. Dowdell wastes no time sizing the situation up:

"I thought I'd seen everything!" she remarked. I made a small sound.

She dumped her corncobs and the Farm Journal and ripped the duct tape off my mouth.

"Yeoww!" I hollered.

"Had to be done," she said. "Who did you say you was?"

I coughed up something--maybe a tadpole. "I'm Bob Barnhart. The boy next door."

"Well, I can see you ain't the girl," said Mrs. Dowdel.

Bob is not the only one in the family for whom prospects look dim in their new home. "I take back every bad thing I ever thought about Terre Haute," Bob's mom laments as she sizes up the situation, and his dad, serving his first pastorate in the dilapidated and almost memberless Methodist Church, spends his first days ministering to the dirty and windowless sanctuary, killing a hog snake and no end of spiders in the choir loft and tacking up plastic over the broken windows. Bob's fifteen-year-old sister Phyllis takes refuge in the daily letters she writes to Elvis and sums up the secret feelings of the family. "I hate this podunk town!"

A most unlikely Christmas angel, Mrs. Dowdel, irascible and short-tempered, proudly proclaiming that she's not a church woman and she doesn't neighbor, nevertheless takes the forlorn family's fortunes into her own large and capable hands. No one knows the ins and outs of the town better than she does, and as the summer turns into autumn, Mrs. Dowdel works her own kind of miracle on every member of the family. Oh, it takes the Halloween appearance of a fake Kickapoo Princess' ghost, the comeuppance of Roscoe Burdick and his accomplices which halts his draft-dodging ways and ends with a shotgun wedding to scheming high school queen Vaynetta Blalock, saving Phyllis from his scruffy attentions and getting at least one Burdick out of town. By book's end, Bob's mother has a proper Methodist Christmas choir to lead, his dad has an overflowing sanctuary and new windows, courtesy of Mrs. Dowdel's jam sales at the triumphant funeral of the Kickapoo Princess led by Rev. Barnhart. And Bob Barnhart, having successfully steered their old car, "The Pickle," on a wild ride into the woods for Mrs. Dowdel's free Christmas tree, feels himself well on the way to manhood.

Richard Peck's newest, A Season of Gifts (Dial, 2009), brings back the memorable Grandma Dowdel of his Newbery books, A Long Way From Chicago (Puffin Modern Classics) and A Year Down Yonder, still feisty and masterful twenty years later, as she finds young people who need her to take their lives by the horns as she did for her grandchildren Joey and Mary Alice a generation earlier.

As Richard Peck shows us in those hilarious and heartwarming books, he excels at stories of the American heartland, set geographically as they are in the Midwest, but also set emotionally squarely in the heart, the place where children--and their elders--really live. As the critic at Kirkus Reviews puts it, "Pitch-perfect prose, laced with humor and poignancy, strong characterization and a clear development of the theme of the gifts one person can offer make this one of Peck's best novels yet-and that's saying something."

Tales from Never Land : Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg and Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand by Gail Carson Levine

Providing the backstory for Barrie's Peter Pan, in Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg, Newbery Award winner Gail Carson Levine tells an intriguing tale of how Never Land's fairies are born and how the magical island provides eternal youth to its residents, including Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.

Born of a baby's first laugh, Never fairy Prilla suddenly appears at Fairy Haven, complete except for her apparent lack of a special talent. Unlike Tinker Bell, who repairs pots and pans, or Rani, who can work magic with water, Prilla's lack of a useful ability leaves her feeling lonely and unwanted among the hard-working fairy society of Never Land. But Mother Dove, whose molted feathers provide the magical flying dust for the fairies and whose egg protects the perpetual youth to all Never Land residents, loves little Prilla and assures her she has an important but unrecognized talent.

When a wild hurricane injures Mother Dove and breaks her egg, Prilla is one of the three chosen to compel the dragon Kyto to provide the flame to restore the egg. Together with Rani and Vidia, the swiftest flying fairy, Prilla helps secure a mermaid's comb, Captain Hook's cigar holder, and a golden hawk's feather with which to bribe the dragon. When the dragon's treachery threatens the repair of the egg, it is Prilla's ability to summon the power of belief of the mainland children, the Clumsies, which saves the magic of Never Land.

Although Fairy Haven is saved by the successful restoration of the egg, in the just published sequel, Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand, things start to fall apart when Soop, the vengeful mermaid who gave up her comb to save the egg, demands payment in the form of a fairy wand from the Great Wanding Fairies.

When Fairy Queen Ree travels with Tink and Terence to secure a wand, Tinker Bell unfortunately picks a selfish and mischievous wand which infects all who touch it with wand madness and grants wishes which wreak havoc on Fairy Haven. Rani is entrapped in the body of a bat, Tinker Bell forgets Peter and falls in love with dust fairy Terence, the magical golden hawk shrinks, and mermaid Soop sends a flood which threatens to drown the fairies of Fairy Haven. Worst of all, the evil wand forces Mother Dove's magical egg to begin to hatch, an unthinkable event which will end the enchantment which protects Never Land.

Armed with calming thoughts and special fairy dust, Tink manages to calm the wand so that its heart grows big enough to melt its spite. At last all selfish wishes are reversed, and Prilla wisely returns "the finest, biggest-hearted wand the Great Wandies would ever own."

Gail Carson Levine tells a light, fast-moving story which nonetheless shows the destructive power of greed. As in the first book, David Christiana's lavish full-page and pull-out illustrations ably support Levine's characterizations.

A Friend in Need: The Very Fairy Princess A Spooky Sparkly Halloween by Julie Andrews and Emma Hamilton

BOO! You might not recognize me, because I'm wearing a costume... but I'm still a fairy princess underneath.

You can take the princess out of her sparkles, but you can't take the sparkles out of a princess.

But Gerry has a problem with her costume for the school Halloween parade. Her brother wisecracks that she should go as a drama queen! Her dad annoyingly jokes that she can just wear her daily attire, fairy wings and crown. Gerry protests:

"That's not a costume! That's what I AM!"

How to find a costume that allows her to keep her crown and wings? But real fairy princesses rise above adversity, and Gerry has a stroke of brilliance. She adds a draped white sheet and a halo, and voila'--she's an angel!

At school everyone is dressed for the occasion, and her best friend Delilah shows her her dentist's costume, pointing out that that is what she's going to be when she grows up. But at lunch, class clown Connor gets a bit wild with the ketchup for his hot dog and squirts the red stuff all over Delilah's impeccable white medical coat. Delilah is distraught.

"I can't wear this in the parade! It sends TOTALLY the wrong message about dentists!"

But a friend in need is a friend indeed. Gerry takes off her sheet, and tying it around Delilah's shoulders in two big knots, turns her into a giant tooth.

"But what about your costume?" asks the loyal Delilah.

Gerry gets to work with construction paper, glue, and glitter, and presto! Suddenly she's the Tooth Fairy, the perfect parade partner for Delilah, and the two take the trophy for the Most Creative Teamwork.

Fairy princesses make sacrifices for friends in need, and Julie Andrews and daughter Emma Walton Hamilton concoct another convincing plot for their persistently effervescent and best-selling heroine in The Very Fairy Princess: A Spooky, Sparkly Halloween (Little Brown Kids, 2016), all dressed up for the holiday in an appropriately glittery new paperback edition with stickers, in a story that celebrates the Halloween holiday with the bonus of a perky plug for thinking outside the box. Their illustrious illustrator, Christine Davenier, provides the sparkle in her charming watercolor and pencil artwork of a very fairy princess at work in the world, in a holiday story that young readers will relish (without Connor's ketchup!)

Backyard Biologists: Fancy Nancy, Explorer Extraordinaire by Jane O'Connor

"Bonjour, everybody! Welcome to our club. Bree and I love to go exploring in the wild. We collect leaves, watch birds and butterflies, and inspect insects. If you are like us, you can be Explorers Extraordinaire.

Love, Nancy"

Fancy Nancy a wonkette? Who would have thought that the original glitter girl is devoted to field work and research with stacks of scientific tomes?

In her latest in this best-selling series, Jane O'Connor's Fancy Nancy: Explorer Extraordinaire! (HarperCollins, 2009) shows us another side of Fancy Nancy. Sure, she's still chic, with glamorous sunglasses, lacy gloves, and even little maracas in case she and her sidekick Bree feel like doing a little Latin dancing, but in her newest adventure Nancy obviously has her binoculars set on some serious exploring.

Equipped with a detailed map and a cozy clubhouse constructed from a backyard tree and some designer sheets, Nancy and Bree set out on a day-long expedition to observe trees, bugs, and birds up close and personal. The two scientists identify a variety of leaves, carefully collecting only those blown down by a storm, and describe six-spotted red lady bugs, ants, flies, and orb spiders before moving on to the life cycle (egg and caterpillar, chrysalis, and adult) of butterflies. They photograph and identify monarch, swallowtail, and red admiral butterflies, and Nancy tells us how to tell a moth from a butterfly. ("Moths' wings lie flat when they land; butterflies hold their wings upright.")

Nancy and Bree give their little brother and sister the slip (they are too "immature" (that's fancy for not grown-up enough) to be in the club as they zip back to their clubhouse for refreshments (that's fancy for snacks) and some research from the science books that Nancy has stashed there. After they sip her special pink lemonade with a dash of cranberry juice and fresh raspberries, the club's two mature (and only) members are off to study the foxglove, Queen Anne's lace, and lady slippers in Mrs. DeVine's wildflower garden.

After lunch Nancy and Bree ignore the longing looks of their little siblings to continue their nature study with some bird watching. There are pigeons, sparrows, and robins all around, but Nancy's favorite is the hummingbird ("So petite, and their wings are iridescent; that's fancy for shiny")). But while the two birders seek the elusive hummingbird, little brother and sister come up with a real nature project. They have found a baby robin who has fallen out of its nest, and they need their big sisters to come to the rescue. The baby robin is soon back home, safe and sound, and Nancy and Bree agree that their little siblings have shown real maturity in going for help to save the fallen bird.

It's back to the clubhouse, where the Explorers' Club soon initiates two very happy new junior members.

Author O'Connor works in some great mini-lessons in botany and zoology, including Nancy's six Explorers' Club rules ("Rule #3: No touching! Just looking!"). Included for fun are Nancy's instructions for easy-to-make cookie cutter and pine cone bird feeders and some pretty funny nature riddles. ("What do you call a 100-year-old ant? An antique!" (That's fancy for really old.)) Ably assisted as always by illustrator Robin Preiss Glasser, who gives Nancy her inimitable look ("Just because you're exploring doesn't mean you can't be fancy!"), O'Connor provides an informational story with plenty of new fancy words to build the vocabularies of her many loyal fans.

Corps de Ballet? Dance Is For Everyone by Andrea Zuill

Mrs. Iraina and her ballerinas were surprised.

There was a new student in their dance class

They decided it was okay for her to join.

Besides, who would be brave enough to tell a 450-pound alligator she couldn't?

The big green 'gator seems to be able to follow all the moves, so Mrs. Iraina carries on with class, making a mental note to stock up on alligator snacks to keep her little dancers safe. They name the alligator Tanya.

There was one hazard, though.

Tanya didn't seem to know what was going on with her tail!

Ballet teachers have to be creative with the dancers they have, and for their recital Mrs. Iraina and her little ballerinas come up with a novel production with a setting which is, er, suited to Tanya's talents--"The Legend of the Swamp Queen," with the kids in animal outfits and you-know-who dancing the title role!

The audience is enthralled with the star ballerina--so strong and so fully immersed in her role!

And what an unbelievably realistic costume!

It's a hit, in Andrea Zuill's Dance Is for Everyone (Sterling Books, 2017). There are plenty of giggles as the little dancers gawk at their big green classmate and try not to trip on her tail, and author-illustrator Zuill provides plenty of sight gags as Tanya trips the not-so-light fantastic to extend the humor of this tale. Says School Library Journal, "The illustrations are quirky and the plot is engaging, with jokes adults will appreciate peppered throughout. The narrative coveys the story's message of inclusion in a subtle manner, but the book's title makes this important theme abundantly clear."

For a further taste of Zuill's comic picture book talents, see her delightful walk on the wild side with a trio of pampered pooches, in Wolf Camp (read review here).

Floral Frenzy: Mrs. Peanuckle's Flower Alphabet by Jessie Ford

Say it with flowers!

Summer is in full swing and flowers are in full bloom. Preschoolers are learning their letters, so why not learn them in alphabetical order with
Mrs. Peanuckle's Flower Alphabet (Mrs. Peanuckle's Alphabet) (Macmillan, 2018).

In this cheerful board book, illustrated with just the right amount of detail by Jessie Ford, little abecedarians can meet twenty-six common flowers from asters to zinnias.

Several of the entries are fairly rare species, not found in the everyday garden. For example, orchids, brought to you by the letter O, exist in 28,000 varieties, while the bird of paradise bloom is, like its namesake, found in tropical zones. Echinachia is a favorite of the pollinators--bees, birds, and butterflies--and the aster, named from the Greek for their star shapes, are kind enough to bloom in autumn, when most of the rest are simply busy sowing seeds!

There are wild flowers, such as Queen Anne's Lace, that favorite of the waysides, and water lilies, which cleverly float on their leaves in waterways. There's the ubiquitous geranium, fond of pots, the showy dahlia, so "dah-ling!" and the sun-loving sunflower whose face follows the sun across the summer sky. Preschoolers can learn their letters and get a little botany lesson along the way in this alphabet book of blooms.

Other books in this series are Mrs. Peanuckle's Tree Alphabet (Mrs. Peanuckle's Alphabet), Mrs. Peanuckle's Bug Alphabet (Mrs. Peanuckle's Alphabet) Mrs. Peanuckle's Bug Alphabet (Mrs. Peanuckle's Alphabet), and Mrs. Peanuckle's Vegetable Alphabet (Mrs. Peanuckle's Alphabet).