The Best-Kept Secret (Redfeather Books)

Eleven-year-old Jo takes a magical carousel ride seven years into the future, where she and her fellow travelers face a decision involving a possible change in the nature of reality

Grade 2-4-- Take a bit of The Time Machine , sprinkle in some Tuck Everlasting and a dash of the movie Big and the result is this fantasy approach to accepting that life is always changing. Joanna doesn't want to leave Marley Street, even if their house is too small. But the proprietors of the carousel that appears magically one morning have other ideas for Joanna and a handful of her townsfolk. Climbing hesitantly on their strangely alive mounts, each rider takes a rollicky spin, winding up seven years in the future. All find the promise of something wonderful, except Joanna, who, much against the posted rules, brings seven-year-old Davy back from the future. After a mechanical breakdown, discord among riders, and a shaky trip to return Davy to his cozy house on Singer Street, the carousel deposits its passengers back in real time with but a fuzzy memory of their fantastic journey. Joanna can't explain why, but suddenly she knows it's okay for the family to move to the new house on Singer Street. The 17 short chapters spin by as quickly as the carousel due to Rodda's skill in drawing readers into the story early and keeping events building at a fast clip. The characters are uniformly warm, if quirky, and even the old town crab and Joanna's stick-in-the-mud friend are treated with understanding. Young's black-and-white drawings, with their rampant carousel horses and time travelers in glowing auras, capture the light spirit of the story. An amusing, optimistic chapter book fantasy to read alone or aloud. --Joanne Aswell, Long Valley Middle School, NJ
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.