Author: Ellen Potter
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Rating: WORTHY!
Illustrated by Qin Leng.
This is volume two in a series of short novels aimed at seven to nine year olds. The chapters are few and short, and there are engaging line-drawings by Qin Leng. The main character is Piper Green, a feisty and self-possessed young girl who isn't as they say, backward about coming forward. It's so nice to read a novel about a girl who isn't afraid to step up and take action even though her actions tend to be misguided and in need some subsequent correctional activity!
Piper lives on Peek-a-Boo island off the coast of Maine, and in this story Piper learns that the classroom pet rabbit had to be sent home with a teacher because a new girl is coming to join the class and she has a dander allergy. Piper isn't on board with this at all, and when she meets the new girl the next morning on the lobster boat in which they have to travel to the nearest island which sports a school, she hits up the poor girl with the story that their teacher is really a witch.
Piper's fiction is aided immensely, if indirectly, by the fact that the new girl hails from new Jersey. Their teacher's use of teaching aids relevant to New Jersey is what triggers panic in the new girl and big trouble for Piper.
Once her parents learn of Piper's behavior, they insist she go with them to the new girl's house - which turns out to be the island's lighthouse - to apologize. It's during this meeting that Piper discovers the secret value in the one earring which she had dug out from the fairy exchange hole which resides in the big old fairy tree that grows in Piper's front yard.
Once again Ellen Potter has written a highly enjoyable and quickly-moving tale that sounds realistic and tells a cool story about Piper and her antics. I loved the story and I recommend it.
