Skary Childrin and the Carousel of Sorrow
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Twelve years ago, for 12 days straight, the town of Widowsbury suffered a terrible storm, which tore open a gate through which escaped all sorts of foul, rotten things. Strange things and strange people were no longer welcomed in Widowsbury, for one could never be sure of what secrets waited under the surface . . .
Adelaide Foss, Maggie Borland, and Beatrice Alfred are known by their classmates at Widowsbury's Madame Gertrude's School for Girls as "scary children." Unfairly targeted because of their peculiarities—Adelaide has an uncanny resemblance to a werewolf, Maggie is abnormally strong, and Beatrice claims to be able to see ghosts—the girls spend a good deal of time isolated in the school's inhospitable library facing detention. But when a number of people mysteriously begin to disappear in Widowsbury, the girls work together, along with Steffen Weller, son of the cook at Rudyard School for Boys, to find out who is behind the abductions. Will they be able to save Widowsbury from a 12-year-old curse?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Twelve years ago, the town of Widowsbury endured a 12-day storm that unleashed evil. Since then, the nightmarish town has insisted on conformity and shunned strangers, which makes life miserable for three students at Madame Gertrude's School for Girls: 11-year-old Adelaide resembles a werewolf, wild-haired 12-year-old Maggie is exceptionally strong, and seven-year-old Beatrice befriends the ghosts of rodents. They are ceaselessly taunted and punished, finally finding some refuge in the arrival of a new teacher, Miss Delia. But when Miss Delia and several schoolboys are lured into the woods by a mysterious carousel and disappear, the misfits are devastated by her absence and reluctantly band together to save the "dreadfully cursed" town. Towell's atmospheric first novel is filled with humor and evocative descriptions ("Here the trees reached their naked limbs up and scratched at the dark sky, distortions in the bark making faces paralyzed in anguish"). Readers who share in the girls' outsider status will likely value the story's emotional gravity and emphasis on compassion. Ages 8 12.
