Stealing Magic: A Sixty-Eight Rooms Adventure (The Sixty-Eight Rooms Adventures)
This sequel to the popular The Sixty-Eight Rooms (2010) begins just a few months after the first book ended. Sixth-graders Ruthie and Jack are just coming down from their adventure at the Art Institute of Chicago’s minature Thorne Rooms. Well, really, inside the Thorne Rooms, as a magic key allowed them to shrink and enter the dollhouse-proportioned spaces. Now the key once more leads them back in time—until it’s stolen. The tension is cranked up even higher as the kids try to help a Jewish girl in 1937 Paris escape the Holocaust and also meet a slave girl in pre–Civil War Charleston. These events may be one too many, causing the magical machinations to become more complicated than ever. Still, there’s a respectable villian, plenty of action, and a nice dose of art and history to keep readers involved. Oh, and magic. Don’t forget the magic. Grades 4-7. --Ilene Cooper--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.