Books by Margaret Mahy and Complete Book Reviews

Margaret Mahy, Author . S&S/McElderry $16.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-689-85053-0
Veteran author Mahy (The Changeover; The Tricksters) again displays her knack for expressing family tensions via supernatural events in this uneven but often gripping novel. Seventeen-year-old Roland, one of the "top guys" at school, finds...
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Margaret Mahy, Author Viking Children's Books $12.95 (160p) ISBN 978-0-670-83734-2
Sturdy, earth-bound Flora resents her glamorous cousin. Newly orphaned Anthea has come to live with Flora's family in the house that is haunted by the girls' grandfather, Lionel. Unsure of her place in this chaotic adoptive family, Anthea retreats...
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Margaret Mahy, Author Scholastic $2.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-590-41513-2
In one of Mahy's best works, three brothers show up at Harry's house and she doesn't know whether they are aspects of her own imagination, or terrifying supernatural forces. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)
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Margaret Mahy, Author Scholastic $2.5 (0p) ISBN 978-0-590-40321-4
The award-winning author weaves an intricate story about strangers in a familya boy from another dimension and a girl from another marriage. Ages 8-12. (April)
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Margaret Mahy, Author Simon Pulse $8 (288p) ISBN 978-0-689-82911-6
In a novel PW called ""intricately structured"" and ""profoundly satisfying,"" a 19-year-old boy, unable to come to terms with his sister's accidental death five years earlier, finds unexpected solace in a friendship with a woman with Alzheimer's....
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Margaret Mahy, Author Puffin Books $4.99 (176p) ISBN 978-0-14-038594-6
A girl who doesn't speak uncovers secrets concealed by her older sister and an eccentric neighbor. In a starred review, PW said: ""Mahy's exceptional imagination and storytelling prowess will make it difficult for readers to leave this book behind...
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Margaret Mahy, Author Viking Children's Books $14.99 (176p) ISBN 978-0-670-86455-3
Twelve-year-old Hero has chosen to talk to no one except (on occasion) her older brother, and yet, she notes, ""even in the heart of my silence, I was still a word child."" And, indeed, the reflective Hero--who returns again and again to stories she
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Margaret Mahy, Author Puffin Books $4.99 (224p) ISBN 978-0-14-036599-3
Haunting, funny and romantic, this Carnegie Medal winner chronicles Laura's efforts to save her brother from a decidedly evil spirit. Ages 12-up. (Jan.)
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Margaret Mahy, Author Puffin Books $3.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-14-036600-6
In this exuberant, thoughtful story, Angela finds romance in an unexpected place while she searches for her unknown father. Ages 12-up. (Jan.)
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Margaret Mahy, Author Yearling Books $3.25 (0p) ISBN 978-0-440-40408-8
This frightening, penetrating tale concerns Barney Palmer, who discovers that one person in each generation of his family has had supernatural powers; has he inherited this dreaded curse? Ages 9-12. (Feb.)
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Margaret Mahy, Author Margaret K. McElderry Books $16 (278p) ISBN 978-0-689-50446-4
Sometimes Jonny, 19, feels that the memory of his sister Janine's death five years before will always be more real to him than anything in his own life. One night, he sets out on a drunken midnight search for Bonny, his sister's best friend. His...
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Margaret Mahy, Author Margaret K. McElderry Books $16 (266p) ISBN 978-0-689-50400-6
With the appearance of this haunting, intriguing novel, Mahy (twice a winner of the Carnegie Medal) has written perhaps her best work yet. It begins as a family Christmas story, with Jack and Naomi Hamilton, their five children and assorted guests...
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Margaret Mahy, Author . S&S/Aladdin $10 (208p) ISBN 978-0-689-83903-0
An aspiring actor, newly graduated from prep school, runs into an old school chum who leads him on a 24-hour escapade into a very different social stratum. "The quick pace and assemblage of quirky, appealing characters will hook readers,"...
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Margaret Mahy, Author . Simon Pulse $7.99 (207p) ISBN 978-0-689-85054-7
A teacher discovers that Roland, one of the "top guys" at school, is shoplifting; the man uses the incident to blackmail the teen into cozying up to a loner student, whose interest in alchemy prompts Roland's awareness of his own magical
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Margaret Mahy, Author , illus. by The Tjong Khing. Front Street $7.95 (0p) ISBN 978-1-932425-25-3
According to PW , "Readers with a taste for the eerie should ignore the advice proffered in this book's title. Most of these 11 entries boast suspenseful, usually unpredictable plots and believable characterizations." Ages 8-12. (Dec.)
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Margaret Mahy, Author Margaret K. McElderry Books $15.95 (185p) ISBN 978-0-689-50391-7
Beautiful Angela May lives a rather eccentric life with her mother in a small house at the top of Dry Creek Road. All her life she has heard that she was a child of love, but that her father was married and could not leave his other family. Now she's
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Margaret Mahy, Author Atlantic Monthly Press $12.95 (25p) ISBN 978-0-87113-048-8
When Mrs. Castle goes to work as an atomic scientist, Mr. Castle assures their children he will care for them and the house. Clarissa, Carlo and even baby Carlo look dubious but their father proves to be a super househusband. The little ones are...
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Margaret Mahy, Author . S&S/McElderry $17.99 (512p) ISBN 978-1-4169-1812-7
Mahy (Alchemy ) serves up a post-apocalyptic fantasy, fashioning a world struggling back from near-oblivion. In a land where even the best-marked roads sometimes disappear without explanation, Maddigan's Fantasia, a traveling circus, is one of...
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Margaret Mahy, Author . S&S/McElderry $18.99 (411p) ISBN 978-1-4169-7807-7
Hans Christian Andersen Award–winner Mahy serves up a highly successful fantasy concerning Heriot Tarbas, a young man subject to fits and prophetic dreams, who believed that “something ravenous was feeding on him and tearing him into two.
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Shirley Hughes, Illustrator Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers $15 (0p) ISBN 978-0-679-82231-8
Despite a rather ponderous title, this collection is full of airy, light-hearted mirth. Nine tales, like much of Mahy's previous work, proclaim the eventual triumph of the imagination over greed, prejudice and stultifying convention. In ``The Trees''
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Marion Young, Illustrator Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers $13.95 (100p) ISBN 978-0-385-31015-4
The first book in a four-volume series introduces the Fortune family, whose gypsy-like existence takes them from Australia to their father's childhood home in New Zealand. Greeted by throngs of Fortunes, who share a fondness for songs about prunes...
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Margaret Mahy, illus. by Gavin Bishop. Gecko Press USA (Lerner, dist.), $18.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-8774-6791-2
This second posthumously published work by the late Mahy, after The Man from the Land of Fandango, is distinctive and full of sly humor. Mister Whistler loves to dance so much that when his Great-Aunt Lydia calls him for help washing her windows, he
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Polly Dunbar, Illustrator , illus. by Polly Dunbar. Clarion $16 (31p) ISBN 978-0-618-69395-5
When the kids suggest Dad look for his lost car keys in the depths of their wingback chair, the family's fortunes take a dramatic and deliciously silly turn for the better. Mahy's crisp rhyming quatrains, in the voice of a precocious girl,...
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Margaret Mahy, illus. by Polly Dunbar. Clarion, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-547-81988-4
The jolly hero of the title—he's a round-headed, rosy-cheeked man who wears calico trousers and a "hat with a tassel and all"—springs from a painting created by two children and becomes the instigator of a fanciful romp. A menagerie of bouncy, music-
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Quentin Blake, Illustrator Margaret K. McElderry Books $13.95 (120p) ISBN 978-0-689-50483-9
There are well over 100 pages of mischievous, marvelous stories and poems in this collection from Mahy ( The Haunting ; The Tricksters ) and Blake (illustrator of The BFG ). Blake's quirky black-and-white drawings frequently comment on the text like
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Patricia MacCarthy, Illustrator Viking Children's Books $15.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-670-87314-2
The idea has enormous promise: a drum-playing Mama (""Beating those drums makes me feel at ease with the world"") remains oblivious while a virtual zoo parades through the house to share lunch with her baby. It's too bad, then, that MacCarthy and...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Patricia MacCarthy, Illustrator Viking Children's Books $14.99 (80p) ISBN 978-0-670-87042-4
In another writer's hands, a plot involving talking paper dolls could be disastrous. But Mahy (The Door in the Air; The Greatest Show Off Earth, see p. 69) has a dazzling touch with fantasy, elevating it from potential silliness to lyrical...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Patricia MacCarthy, Illustrator Dial Books $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-8037-0458-9
Mahy's jocund verse, first published 15 years ago, has been dressed in colorful new clothes. MacCarthy's vivid batik paintings on silk gleam like the eyes of the ""white toothed crocodiles'' or the sleek stripes of the magnificent tigers. The story...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Patricia MacCarthy, Illustrator Viking Children's Books $13 (320p) ISBN 978-0-670-84547-7
Mahy and MacCarthy ( 17 Kings and 42 Elephants ) are once again delightfully paired in this sprightly feminist tale about a chauvinist pirate and the clever old woman who tends his house, ``keeping everything shipshape.'' When Pirate Peregrine...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Patricia MacCarthy, Illustrator Puffin Books $4.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-14-055322-2
PW enjoyed both text (``spiced with alliterative amusements'') and art (``brilliantly colored batik paintings [that] celebrate... joyful noise'') in this larky tale of a young pirate, his aunt and his parrot. Ages 3-8. (Aug.)
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Patricia MacCarthy, Illustrator Orchard Books (NY) $15.95 (32p) ISBN 978-0-531-30272-9
Mahy and MacCarthy (previously paired for 17 Kings and 42 Elephants) team up for this story of a buttoned-down businessman who literally kicks off his shoes at his children's urging. Mr. Prospero informs twins Miranda and Harry that ""fathers...
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Margaret Mahy, illus. by Steven Kellogg. Scholastic/Levine, $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-545-20667-9
The boys who live next door to Sammy are thrilled when their father finds a racy red speedboat at the flea market. Sammy, however, is puzzled by his own father’s purchase: a clunky, green bathtub. Kellogg’s reliably ebullient illustrations let...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Steven Kellogg, Illustrator Puffin Books $5.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-14-055579-0
An eccentric family with a rattlebang car go picnicking on an active volcano in this tall tale PW called ""absurdly amusing."" Ages 5-7. (July)
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Steven Kellogg, Illustrator Dial Books $15.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-8037-1318-5
The distinguished duo behind the droll The Boy Who Was Followed Home offer another absurdly amusing but less satisfying tale. The newlywed MacTavishes forgo the purchase of a reliable new car in favor of ``an old rattlebang'' so that they can also...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Phyllis J. Fogelman, Editor, Patricia MacCarthy, Illustrator Puffin Books $4.95 (32p) ISBN 978-0-8037-0781-8
PW enjoyed the ``rollicking language'' of Mahy's ``foot-stomping poem,'' in this fanciful jungle journey illustrated with glowing batik art. Ages 4-8. (May)
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Helen Craig, Illustrator Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Books $14.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-688-10347-7
Mahy ( The Seven Chinese Brothers ; The Great White Man-Eating Shark ) writes with considerable verve about a most unusual houseguest. A blue-flowered plant begs mild-mannered Mr. Parkin to take her home and tend to her--``I will be your humble...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Jean Tseng, Illustrator, Mou-Sien Tseng, Illustrator Scholastic $14.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-590-42055-6
In colorful language well suited to a story of ingenuity and valor, Mahy presents the Chinese folktale about brothers with amazing powers. Although the broad outline is the same as The Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Huchet Bishop, illustrated by...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Emma Chichester Clark, Illustrator Dial Books $12.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-8037-0938-6
Although not up to Mahy's usual standards, this story still qualifies as a romp. A young queen wishes for a pet, but is overruled by her housekeeper and the butler: too messy. An invitation to a pet show proves irresistible, however, and when the...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Margaret Chamberlain, Illustrator Margaret K. McElderry Books $14.95 (26p) ISBN 978-0-689-50595-9
Mrs. Oberon's son, Scrimshaw, frantic to soothe his teething baby, phones for a slice of his mother's cock-a-hoop honey cake, and Mrs. Oberon rushes off to the rescue on her trail bike. In a sprightly alliterative text that often approaches the...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Margaret Chamberlain, Illustrator Puffin Books $3.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-14-037128-4
PW applauded this ``combination of goofy, good-natured humor, cartoony characters and a convoluted mystery.'' Ages 10-14. (Apr.)
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Margaret Chamberlain, Illustrator Dial Books $13.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-8037-1350-5
Spurred on by their dreams of becoming real live pirates, Lionel Wafer and the rest of the staff of Ye Olde Pyratte Shippe Tea Shoppe weigh anchor for the Thousand Islands in order to kidnap wealthy inventor Humbert Cash-Cash and steal his legendary
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Wendy Smith, Illustrator Margaret K. McElderry Books $13.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-689-50515-7
Lizzie Firkin, a songwriter, lives in a decaying old house with her cat and parrot, and spends her nights performing in a nightclub. When the exhausted Lizzie can no longer pick up after herself--and can't walk across the room for clutter--she calls
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Wendy Smith, Illustrator Viking Children's Books $13.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-670-85736-4
Delphinium is a bored 10-year-old girl on the Space Station Vulnik, where all fun is forbidden lest the residents attract the dreaded Acropola, a group of galaxy-roaming entities that suck up amusement wherever they go. Delphinium and her librarian...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Wendy Smith, Illustrator Yearling Books $3.25 (0p) ISBN 978-0-440-40422-4
This riotous romp concerns Huxley Hammond and his sister, Zaza, who are sent off to the Unexpected School on Hurricane Peak to be disciplined--and the unexpected is exactly what they encounter. Ages 9-12. (Mar.)
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Wendy Smith, Illustrator Puffin Books $4.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-14-037926-6
The adventures of a 10-year-old girl on the Space Station Vulnik involve zipping around the galaxy, reviving a traveling space circus and battling pirates. PW found that ""all the mad rushing about seems underexplained.... The scattershot results...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Wendy Smith, Illustrator Margaret K. McElderry Books $16.95 (92p) ISBN 978-0-689-50604-8
These 12 stories are so inventive that the reader can rarely see beyond the next curve. In ``Sailor Jack and the Twenty Orphans,'' for example, the title character takes to piracy so that he can become rich enough to adopt Tom and the other 19 chaps
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Wendy Smith, Illustrator Margaret K. McElderry Books $13.95 (26p) ISBN 978-0-689-50498-3
As rendered in Smith's sparkling watercolors, Mrs. de Vere is a small woman who lives in a large house. Every day she crosses the park to the beach, where she confides to the waves that she wants company. Mr. Derry is a big man who lives in a little
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Wendy Smith, Illustrator Margaret K. McElderry Books $13.95 (132p) ISBN 978-0-689-50488-4
This marvelously funny novel brings together as zany a collection of characters as one could hope for: Heathcliff Warlock, a most unconventional deputy headmaster; Sir Quincey Judd-Sprockett, a nefarious and inept inventor; Belladonna Doppler, whom...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Jonathan Allen, Illustrator Viking Children's Books $14.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-670-85015-0
The award-winning author of The Changeover and The Tricksters scores another triumph with this mirthful escapade. As he dozes curled up in his habitual ball, a three-legged cat named Tom dreams of traveling to faraway lands. But to his owner, Mrs....
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Jonathan Allen, Illustrator Dial Books $13.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-8037-0749-8
Although very different from her acclaimed 17 Kings and 42 Elephants , Mahy's newest book is sure to be a winner. The star is a crafty boy named Norvin, whose acting aspirations are thwarted by the fact that ``he looked very like a shark.'' So...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Jonathan Allen, Illustrator Puffin Books $5.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-14-055745-9
Capitalizing on his sharkish looks, Norvin frightens away all the other swimmers from Caramel Cove--except for one whose dorsal fin might just be genuine; ""Certain to tickle funnybones,"" said PW. Ages 4-8. (Mar.)
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Marian Young, Illustrator Yearling Books $3.5 (112p) ISBN 978-0-440-41060-7
PW found this family story set in New Zealand, first of the Cousins Quartet, ``original and witty.'' Ages 8-11. (Jan.)
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Selina Young, Author, Selina Young, Illustrator Viking Children's Books $15.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-670-87943-4
With bustling watercolors and catchy cadences borrowed from ""This is the way we wash our clothes,"" New Zealanders Mahy (Boom, Baby, Boom, Boom!) and Young (Adam Pig's Everything Fun Book) offer a buoyant story of a walk to the seaside that takes...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Anthony Kerins, Illustrator Margaret K. McElderry Books $16 (1p) ISBN 978-0-689-50616-1
A curious kitten gets the ball rolling in this rollicking cumulative tale of unusual efforts made to rescue the tiny feline from the top of the Christmas tree. Well-meaning animals take turns trying to get the kitten down, all with snarled results....
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Barbara Steadman, Author, Barbara Steadman, Illustrator Overlook Press $14.95 (96p) ISBN 978-0-87951-592-8
Written in 1975 and now published for the first time in the U.S., this buoyant caper set in rural New Zealand is simpler and less substantial than Mahy's recent The Other Side of Silence (reviewed Oct. 9). With four children the Harrington household
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Robert Staermose, Illustrator Puffin Books $4.99 (96p) ISBN 978-0-14-038973-9
A shy boy finds love and ice cream when his spry granny goes off to fight her nemesis, a theatrical pirate out to steal a golden telephone. ""As zippy--and often as alliterative--as its title,"" said PW. Ages 8-12. (Jan.)
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Robert Staermose, Illustrator Viking Children's Books $12.99 (96p) ISBN 978-0-670-86331-0
As zippy-and often as alliterative-as its title, Mahy's most recent rowdy romp takes place on Breakfast Island, where painfully shy (but, he proves, ultimately brave) Saracen Hobday lives with his spry granny, a retired ""detective inspector."" When
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Robert Staermose, Illustrator Viking Books $14.99 (128p) ISBN 978-0-670-87490-3
Mahy (The Greatest Show Off Earth) again whips up a delectable brew of the almost-credible and the outright fantastic, laced with wryly understated dialogue and droll, Monty Python-esque ingredients. The--perhaps coincidentally named--hero is Monty...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, David Loew, Illustrator Margaret K. McElderry Books $17 (192p) ISBN 978-0-689-83884-2
Mahy (Memory; The Changeover) once again captures age-old yet contemporary adolescent sensibilities. Ellis, an aspiring actor who has just graduated from prep school, runs into an old public school friend who leads him on a 24-hour escapade into a...
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Margaret Mahy, Author, Lectorum, Manufactured by Boyds Mills Press $15.95 (180p) ISBN 978-1-886910-22-5
Readers with a taste for the eerie should ignore the advice proffered in this book's title. Most of these 11 entries boast suspenseful, usually unpredictable plots and believable characterizations despite the sometimes otherworldly scenarios...
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