(3) 4-6 When Abigail's fourth-grade teacher tells the students to try to solve a mystery of their own, she decides to find out who Frances is--that's the name Abigail's grandmother, who has Alzheimer's disease, calls her. But Abigail has an even harder time understanding the strange behavior of her best friend, Travis, who avoids her at school yet is friendly at home. The dialogue and the friendship issues are true to life.

Reviewer: Anne St. John

(2) 4-6 Illustrated by Nick Sharratt. For a school project on the Victorians, eleven-year-old Charlie creates a diary written by Lottie, her nineteenth-century alter ego. Chapters alternate between Charlie's chatty, opinionated narrative about school, home, and her mother's boyfriend, and domestic servant Lottie's earnest journal entries, which offer a different perspective on Charlie's problems. This is a gentle endorsement for using one's imagination to work through change.

Reviewer: Kitty Flynn | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 1999

(4) 4-6 In seventeenth-century England during an outbreak of Plague, thirteen-year-old Nell Bullen witnesses the decimation following a neighboring town's choice to isolate itself with the infection rather than spread it. Wise draws the connection between fleas and plague a few hundred years too early, but the well-realized setting and the consequences of the town's courage and sacrifice are otherwise entirely engrossing.

Reviewer: Anita L. Burkam

(4) 4-6 Glory Bea Goode, a shy "townie" with a port-wine birthmark, and Marvalene, a "carnie" weary of her nomadic life, meet and share an intense three-day friendship in which both thirteen-year-olds come to value their own disparate lives and families. The rural Missouri setting is well realized and, although the novel is slow to start and somewhat overwritten, it reaches a satisfying conclusion.

Reviewer: Peter D. Sieruta

(2) 4-6 In his third collection of tales, Wynne-Jones's seven stories plumb heaven and earth to reveal human nature with winning originality. The complexities and intricacies of families and friends are viewed, as in one story, as if through a "Pinhole Camera." Like that camera, Wynne-Jones focuses his attention "like a hole in the darkness, a hole that [leads] to somewhere bright."

Reviewer: Susan P. Bloom | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 1999

(3) 4-6 When her mother becomes the amah (Chinese governess) for a wealthy white girl, twelve-year-old Amy must skip her ballet classes--in which she is preparing for the role of Cinderella's mean stepsister--to baby-sit her siblings. Amy's stage and real-life identities begin to converge as she feels increasingly hostile toward her mother's poor-little-rich-girl charge. Readers will sympathize with Amy and won't mind the too-tidy resolution.

Reviewer: Tanya D. Auger

(3) 4-6 Chinatown Mystery series. When a prop gun loaded with real bullets is fired at teenage TV heartthrob Clark Tom, twelve-year-old Lily and her great-aunt Tiger Lil leap to the rescue of the two prime suspects--Lily's brother and a Chinatown gang member. The fast-paced mystery deglamorizes Hollywood, corrects misperceptions about Chinatown, and neatly inserts cultural details into characters' conversations.

Reviewer: Tanya D. Auger

(4) 4-6 Tartan Magic series. When rain keeps them indoors during their visit to Scottish relatives, twins Jennifer and Peter, along with their little sister, explore the attic and discover a magical map belonging to a wicked wizard. Plunged into danger, the twins must find a way to break the wizard's hold on their family. Although the story and characterizations are slight, the fantasy contains some unique elements that will interest readers.

Reviewer: Anne St. John

(3) 4-6 In this lively but compact retelling, Poole does a judicious job of pruning Charles Kingsley's lengthy tale of an ungodly chimney sweep who learns Christian values by being transformed into a water baby. Never cloying, Ormerod's deft watercolor and pen-and-ink illustrations capture both the innocence and the danger of Kingsley's underwater world.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc.

(4) 4-6 In the late eighteenth century, Running Crane, an unskilled young Siksika, joins other Blackfoot Indians in a horse raid. Separated from the party, Running Crane tracks and tames a majestic stallion known as the "spirit horse," and returns home a hero. The familiar story contains two-dimensional characters and is initially slow paced, but the action picks up when Running Crane discovers the legendary horse.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc.

(2) 4-6 When twelve-year-old Hana Riley runs into friendly Mr. Crane, her "favorite teacher ever," vacationing at the beach, he treats her like an equal--unlike her parents and older siblings, who still think of her as the baby of the family. Adler's bittersweet narrative shrewdly captures the wretchedness of feeling completely misunderstood and of being neither a child nor an adult.

Reviewer: Jennifer M. Brabander | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 1998

(4) 4-6 Illustrated by Will Hillenbrand. In this new series debut, Andy wants to ask his parents if his friend Tamika can live with them now that her foster family is moving. Trouble is, it's a bad time to ask for favors--his mother has just announced she's pregnant. Andy is a likable hero, and the spunky, animated illustrations add life where the somewhat sluggish telling does not.

Reviewer: Emma Loy-Santelli

(2) 4-6 Eleven-year-old Lesley is drawn into a mystery when she sees a strange child peering down at her from the attic of the house next door. The three neighbor children adamantly maintain that she is hallucinating, but the secret is shortly revealed--they are hiding a frightened young illegal immigrant. As adept at plotting as she is in characterization, Alcock knows how to build tension from chapter to chapter in the best cliffhanger tradition.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc.

(3) 4-6 Illustrated by Isabelle Brent. Seventeen of Andersen's tales, including old favorites such as "The Little Mermaid" and "The Tinderbox" as well as several lesser-known ones such as "The Bell" and "The Toad," are retold to preserve Andersen's colloquial style. Lavish watercolor illustrations embellished with gold leaf bring out the magic and spiritual longing of the tales.

Reviewer: Pamela McCuen

(2) 4-6 Set in the early nineteenth century just after the War of 1812, this sequel to Journey to Nowhere is a tragedy brightened only by the resiliency of its narrator, twelve-year-old Remembrance Nye. The family's crops are killed by frost, and then Mem's mother, homesick and depressed, retreats from reality, neglecting her newborn daughter. The novel is a well-paced, bracingly realistic portrait of pioneer life.

Reviewer: Mary M. Burns | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 1999

(2) 4-6 Perloo is apprehensive when a fellow Montmer brings him an urgent appeal from Jolaine the Good, "granter" of the Montmers, a jackrabbitish folk who have lived in peace and contentment for many years. Easier-going than the Redwall books, not as richly developed as Avi's own Poppy, Perloo the Bold is a Disneyesque animal fantasy, with theatrical dialogue, good guys (and a girl) to root for, a high-minded but firm-footed theme, and tons of action.

Reviewer: Roger Sutton | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 1999

(2) 4-6 Illustrated by Brian Floca. In 'Poppy', the eponymous mouse heroine lost her first love, Ragweed, and now journeys to tell his family of his unfortunate fate. Accompanied by Ereth the porcupine, Poppy finds Ragweed's family in the midst of a crisis that leads to a desperate battle with some beavers. Accompanied once again by Floca's witty yet pastoral pencil drawings, this is a sequel worthy of its predecessor.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc.

(3) 4-6 Through sixteen-year-old Lucinda's journal entries and letters to and from her family and friends, readers learn about her work with the Underground Railroad in a small Ohio town. The fast-paced, well-researched narrative provides insight into the social and political mores of the time and the dangers faced by those working to help slaves to freedom.

Reviewer: Deborah L. Thompson

(4) 4-6 Buoy lives "very far from land where people think it is lonely," but he loves his life at sea. With his friends Gull and Seal, Buoy guides ships, provides a refuge for ocean animals, and observes the many moods of the sea in sixteen brief, episodic chapters. Buoy's offbeat character and the text's reflective prose may limit the title's audience despite the handsome illustrations and design.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc.

(4) 4-6 In war-torn Belfast, eleven-year-old Maura, whose father is an IRA member and whose brother is a political prisoner, struggles to hold her family together. After an angel appears in the wake of a bomb blast, Maura discovers reserves of inner strength. First published in Great Britain in 1977, the fantasy is an interesting but not completely successful look at coping in the midst of political and religious strife.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc.