This impressive first novel is pure, scary excitement. For classmates Emily and Craig and their teacher, genteel Miss Potts, summer begins routinely enough: Emily tends her rambunctious brother, Craig decides to look up a friend, and Miss Potts closes down the classroom. On one of the desks she finds a mysterious old playbill. Soon, all three are beset by frightening premonitions. Something dangerous, something connected with the past is about to happen. As tension builds, the characters' separate stories come together, seemingly forced by the evil designs of a strange magician who appeared in the town some 50 years before. Together or alone, they must resist him. No deeply embedded meanings are uncovered by the end; this is simply a well-told story of horror. The characters are sharp, the plot is solid, and Bedard has a wonderful way of dropping vivid details, like clues, along the way. Ages 10-14.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
Grade 5-10 An elderly teacher finds a handbill for a magic show that she remembers from her youtha show that she feels was responsible for the death of her friend. It seems that another show is scheduled, and Miss Potts fears for the lives of this audience. With the help of Emily, one of her students, she discovers that the magician is a force of pure evil, and the two are able to thwart himthis time. Bedard's well-paced narrative is rich in language and riveting in tone: it brims with a sense of foreboding that is sustained throughout. The ending, which satisfactorily resolves the crisis for these characters, does not provide a solution for the future, thus continuing the disquieting tone. Transitions between chapters and subplotsEmily and her family, Miss Potts and the other lodgers, two other studentsare sometimes demanding, but the integration of these disparate elements into the novel is otherwise well handled. Particularly well done is the characterization of Emily's brother Albert, a monstrous toddler whose activities change the pace and often ease the tension of the main storyline. A well-crafted eerie novel that demands to be read again. David Gale, ``School Library Journal''
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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