(2) 4-6 Twelve-year-old Vita travels from England to New York City with her WWI-widowed mother after her grandfather loses his home (a small, rundown castle) to a real estate developer with criminal ties. Vita teams up with a street-smart pickpocket and two circus performers to launch an elaborate plot to get the castle back--a caper that turns into a fight for survival. Rundell's gift for pithy description brings the personalities and the world of Jazz Age New York to life.

Reviewer: Sarah Rettger | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2019

(4) 1-3 Illustrated by Emily Sutton. A lonely young boy makes a wish on a shooting star and finds himself in the company of Christmas tree ornaments come to life. With a tin soldier, rocking horse, angel, and robin, Theo has an adventure throughout his snow-covered city on Christmas Eve. Sutton's beautifully intricate watercolor and ink art and the high-quality book production add charm to an otherwise sentimental Christmas story.

Reviewer: Kristy Pasquariello

(3) 4-6 Illustrated by Kristjana S. Williams. Five linked stories expand the adventures of Kipling's Mowgli. The first four stories illustrate important qualities and skills through the experiences of Mother Wolf, Bagheera the panther, Baloo the bear, and Kaa the snake. In the final tale, Mowgli draws on each lesson to prevail over his own adversary, the great white ape. Williams's illustrations add interest, but Rundell's storytelling is the star of this collection.

Reviewer: Megan Lynn Isaac

(3) 4-6 When four children are marooned in the Amazon jungle, they eventually make their way to the ruins of an ancient city, inhabited by "the explorer," a British man with a tragic past. This fanciful survival adventure, relayed in suitably fanciful prose, evokes the improbabilities of nineteenth-century boys' adventure stories, British imperial exploration, and a brief moment of postcolonial awareness.

Reviewer: Deirdre F. Baker

(2) 4-6 In early-twentieth-century Russia, Feodora and her mother teach aristrocrats' abandoned pet wolves how to survive in the wild, despite the tsar's orders to destroy them. When Feo's mother is arrested for treason, Feo, young soldier Ilya, and three wolf companions travel to Saint Petersburg to orchestrate an escape. Folkloric elements make the tale's more implausible events feel like part of a grander tapestry.

Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2015

(2) YA Wilhelmina, daughter of William Silver, white foreman of the Two Tree Hill Farm in Zimbabwe, leads a "wildcat" life. This idyll ends abruptly and tragically with her father's death from malaria, after which she's shipped off to boarding school in England. Rundell's finely drawn etchings of the people in Will's sphere and rich descriptions of African colonial farm life sprawl across the pages.

Reviewer: Anita L. Burkam | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2014

(3) 4-6 Apparent orphan Sophie, on the run with her unconventional guardian Charles, meets a band of children who live on Paris's rooftops to avoid orphanages. Though this nineteenth-century yarn has no magical elements, its whimsy, insistence that one "never ignore a possible," and even its circular spot art give it a fantastical aura. Spoiler: Sophie is less alone than she thought.

Reviewer: Shoshana Flax