Palace Beautiful
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A secret room plus a hidden journal written during the Flu Pandemic of 1918 make for an emotional, magical middle-grade read.
When sisters Sadie and Zuzu move to Salt Lake City, they discover an old journal in a secret room in their new house. Along with their neighbor, Bella, the girls take turns reading the story of a girl named Helen who lived during the flu epidemic of 1918. They soon become wrapped up in Helen's tale, which ends with a tragedy that has a scary parallel to Sadie and Zuzu's lives. Did Helen survive the flu? Is she still alive somewhere? Or could her ghost be watching them?
A NYPL 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Soon after 13-year-old Sadie arrives with her family at their new home in 1985 Salt Lake City, she meets a ghost-obsessed girl who calls herself Bella, and discovers an attic nook named Palace Beautiful. Sadie loves painting and colors especially naming them (chapters are titled cave-dwelling white and spontaneous-combustion scarlet ). Sadie s mother died giving birth to her younger sister, Zuzu, and Sadie harbors anger about that, as well as fear that her pregnant stepmother, Sherrie, may suffer a similar fate. Sadie, Bella, and Zuzu find a journal in Palace Beautiful written by Helen, a girl their age whose family was stricken with influenza in 1918, and whose fears parallel Sadie s. Debut author Williams s vivid prose brings both Sadie and Helen s worlds to life, and narrator Sadie is a particularly perhaps overly precocious observer ( Dad found Sherrie a year and a half ago. She came from Neiman Marcus in Dallas. Dad saw her working at the makeup counter and they fell in love ). Through moments of heartache and joy, Sadie s strong, contemplative spirit shines through, as does the thrill of discovering a secret place of one s one. Ages 10 up.
