The Aviary
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- 5,99 €
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- 5,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
Twelve-year-old Clara Dooley has spent her whole life in the Glendoveer mansion, where her mother is a servant to the kind and elderly matron of the house. Clara has never known another home. In fact, she's confined to the grand estate due to a mysterious heart condition. But it's a comfortable life, and if it weren't for the creepy squawking birds in the aviary out back, a completely peaceful one too.
But once old Mrs. Glendoveer passes away, Clara comes to learn many dark secrets about the family. The Glendoveers suffered a horrific tragedy: their children were kidnapped, then drowned. And their father George Glendoveer, a famous magician and illusionist, stood accused until his death. As Clara digs deeper and deeper into the terrifying events, the five birds in the aviary seem to be trying to tell her something. And Clara comes to wonder: what is their true identity? Clara sets out to solve a decades-old murder mystery—and in doing so, unlocks a secret in her own life, too. Kathleen O'Dell deftly weaves magic, secret identities, evil villians, unlikely heroes, and the wonder of friendship into a mystery adventure with all the charm of an old fashioned classic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's been a few years since readers have heard from O'Dell, apparently because she's been getting her Frances Hodgson Burnett on. This Gilded Age departure from O'Dell's contemporary fare depicts Clara Dooley, an 11-year-old invalid whose mother keeps the fabulous, mysterious house of a magician's widow, Mrs. Glendoveer. The kindly widow has secrets, not least of which is her love for five terrifying birds that live in an iron cage in the garden, but she dies before Clara can discover more than that she had a baby who disappeared. Clara, lonely and rebellious, struggles to make contact with a neighbor, Daphne, despite her mother's prohibitions. Daphne relays more gossip about the Glendoveers, but it's not until Daphne's kitten gets inside the aviary that Clara begins unraveling the truth. Nursing the injured honeycreeper, Clara believes the bird responds by "talking." Can it be? The honeycreeper's encouragement leads to discovery after discovery in a well-paced, high-tension mystery that draws not only on Burnett, but also C.S. Lewis, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, and Neil Gaiman, joining a rich heritage of stories about children with a secret "room of their own." Ages 8 12.
