New Releases by Barbara Brooks Wallace

We¿re in the dangerous streets of the New York tenements at the close of the 19th century, with two young boys who have escaped their vicious stepfather by faking their own drowning in the river. Matt and Mickey Deacon disguise themselves by changing their names to Nip and Tuck. But just changing names for two proverbial peas in a pod is hardly enough to save them from the determined evil predators who are seeking them: Hike Raider, their erstwhile stepfather, who threatens to put the twins¿ baby sister in a dreaded baby farm; Gold-tooth Aunty, a deadly Faginesque female, who reels the unsuspecting boys into her den of pickpockets, cheaters, and thieves; and a roster of other mysterious, wicked characters. Does this story have a melodramatic Victorian happy ending for the twins? Was there ever any doubt?

Maximilian Pettigrew Westmorington Bassford Thorndike Finstersill Smith the Fifth, otherwise known as Max, is an uber-rich, super-spoiled kid. His only friends are his dogs and one more-or-less (mostly less) friend, Percival. Suddenly and dramatically, Max loses both his parents when they sink with the glamorous holiday island where his father has invested every one of his gazillion dollars. Max, in one terrible moment, becomes a penniless orphan. Furthermore, his father''s lawyers have to dig to find so much as one relative to whom they can deliver Max. Next thing you know, Max, who thinks wrinkled old people are creeps, gets dumped in a retirement home run by witchy twin sisters, where he falls in love with a bunch of oldsters, yclept the Mother Goose-ites, who fall in love with him!

The inspiration of a group of Harvard Medical School undergraduates was the beginning of what was to become The Harvard Medical School of China in Shanghai. All, it seems, had received invitations form physicians practicing in China to locate a school of modern medicine there and were eager to join the venture. After many setbacks, in the course of time the school would occupy a large, handsome, two story structure generously offered by the Chinese Red Cross. It provided operating rooms, wards for twenty patients, lecture halls, laboratories, and administration suite, and a student dormitory. Though, by design the Harvard Medical Schools of China was limited to five years, from 1911 to 1916, it did in fact play a not inconsequential role in the introduction of modern medicine to ancient China. It was shortly after this new school opened its doors that my mother passed through them for her first interview with Dr. Carl Hedblom, the note thoracic surgeon, for whom she was to work as surgical nurse, and whom she idolized. It was the interview that was to change the course of her life. Arriving myself sometime not long after that, I did my best to notice how it was going, which I relate in this book.

If someone were to tell you they found a DRAGON in their family garage, you would think they were one of three things: 1) LOONY; or 2) LYING; or 3) VIVIDLY IMAGINATIVE. But Morris was NOT LOONY. He NEVER TOLD A LIE. And as for IMAGINATION, he had ZIP. ZERO. NONE! Therefore, he was the perfect person to discover a BONA FIDE (which means honest-to-goodness, no-doubt-about-it) DRAGON in his family garage.

Bathsheba, the sassy, clever cat who always accompanies Miss Switch everywhere she goes, now goes on an adventure of her own.

Rupert Brown''s pets, a pair of guinea pigs, a turtle, and a cockatiel, have started talking to him again, a sure sign that Miss Switch, a bona fide, no-fooling, real witch, is back again as Pepperdine Elementary School''s enormously popular sixth-grade teacher! This can only spell one thing: the wicked Saturna has never forgiven Rupert for blowing up her judgmental Computowitch to save Miss Switch from its idiotic verdict. So back she is, this time contriving a plot that employs villains so vile they can only be imagined between the covers of actual books. With no Computowitch to help her, will Saturna devise a way to make sure that Rupert and his unlucky classmates meet the same terrible ends as these vile villains?!

In her recent memoir, "Small Footsteps in the Land of the Dragon," award-winning children''s author Barbara "Bobbie" Wallace provides a captivating account of her childhood years in pre-WWII China. What a storyteller! What a life! Bobbie''s American father abandoned his fledgling career in films to sell lamp oil in China for Standard Oil. Good at what he did, he eventually became an executive for Standard Oil of China. At the tender age of sixteen, Bobbie''s Russian mother fled her revolution-torn homeland and came to stay with her Shanghai relatives. She entered the Harvard Medical School of China in the following year. After becoming a registered surgical nurse, she rose to become head nurse at Shanghai''s only sanitarium. The successes of her parents allowed Bobbie and her sister to grow up with "modern" comforts in a country where they were scarce. When you read her book will find that little Bobbie was a precocious observer. You will see sights she saw and hear sounds she heard in a series of vignettes. In them she relates a rainbow of childlike discoveries and insights. While her accounts are full of humor, they also convey her arm''s length awareness of the darker side of life in pre-war China. We love this book!!

Anderson "Andy" Wardell, nicknamed "Little Devil" by her Chinese servants, records eight months of her adventures in China and the United States.

Emily Luccock is looking forward to living at Sugar Hill Hall....She remembers her aunt and uncle''s grand old mansion well, with its enormous, elegant parlor, marble fireplace, and white china cups filled with hot chocolate. But this time things are different. Her aunt''s once bright and lively home is now dead with silence. Evil lurks in every corner, and the dark, shadowed walls watch and whisper late at night. And no one ever speaks. Everything''s changed at Sugar Hill Hall, and Emily knows something awful is happening there. What''s become of Uncle Twice? Why is Aunt Twice a prisoner in her own home? Emily is desperate to uncover the truth. Time is running out, and she must find a way to save the people and home she cares so much about.

Oliver Twister discovers a dragon named Bob living in the Twister garage. Bob has the pleasant smell of cinnamon and nutmeg rather than a swamp or old rubber galoshes, and he needs Oliver to help him do good deeds.

One flight up the narrow, steep stairs, Robin finds himself swallowed up by the darkness, terrified and hating the thought of the misery and fear his knock will bring to the wretched families who huddle behind every door in the building. Thus begins the story set in a grim tenement district of New York City before the turn of the twentieth century. It is there that Robin, once protected by a loving mother and father, both now dead, must contend with a brutal stepfather, Hawker Doak. Yet Robin is faced with only two choices: remain in the ruthless charge of Hawker, collecting the hated rents, and, perhaps worse, being sent to work in a factory or escape into the treacherous slum streets, haunted by, among other horrors, the bullying boys who work and live in the streets, and whom Robin so fears. Either choice provides a sure recipe for a very short life. But in the end it is fear for the life of his baby brother that makes Robin''s agonizing decision for him. The answer to whether or not they survive will only be found when Robin discovers the secret guarded by a place called St. Something. Within this true picture of tenement life, Barbara Brooks Wallace has created another chilling mystery that starts with one kind of terror, only to weave its way into yet another, deepened by intrigue and unspeakable treachery.

If you think nothing much is going on when Rupert P. Brown III begins sixth grade at Pepperdine Elementary School, you''d be dead wrong. Consider the following: a new teacher with the unlikely name of Miss Blossom; a new principal who has all the girls swooning; a talking bird who thinks he''s a math whiz; a computer that goes berserk and produces a Web site called computowitch.com that not only displays some very ominous poetry, but whose password is the name of a witch Rupert has tangled with in the past. Yes, a witch! Faster than you can say "witchcraft and wizardry," Rupert figures he could be in big trouble. He can really use the help of Miss Switch, a real, honest-to-goodness witch herself, who also, amazingly, was once a former popular teacher of Rupert''s class at Pepperdine. He has reason to believe she''s back, but where? Once again, Rupert records another scary (well, sort of) and funny encounter with Miss Switch. His earlier accounts, equally scary and funny, appear in the books The Trouble with Miss Switch and Miss Switch to the Rescue.

This enchanting story of a sheep that grows multicolored wool has "the brevity, simple style, and layered meanings of the classic fables. . . . All told, a natural for reading aloud".--School Library Journal. Full color.

Perfecta Jones is hemmed in by boring houses that to her are no more exciting than shoes boxes. She must obey ridiculous rules of the owner, Mr. Droopert P. Snoot, who has no use for children. On one magical night, Perfecta enters the house across the street, the only one not owned by Mr. Snoot. What happens to her there is an adventure that will change her life! "Characters reminiscent of Roald Dahl"-ALA Booklist "Sets up nasty, convention-bound adults against the free-wheeling imagination of childhood to a surprisingly moving ending."-Bulletin of the Center for Children''s Books

"Bad things always happen in threes!" If a very old person like Grandmama says it, is it not true? This is the very normal, understandable worry eight-year-old Julia has when she has knocked a burning hot iron into her little sister''s hand. The first bad thing! And surely two more must follow, if Grandmama says so. What will they be? When will they happen? This is an enormous worry, indeed! Although this gentle story about a family with three little girls takes place in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century, it has universal appeal, as both family life, and eight-year-old Julia''s fears and concerns are all so true and believable. Perhaps this is because they are true, inspired by the real-life experiences of the author''s mother.

Pudding, the youngest of three Furkins, or elves, living in a barrel in the basement of a human named Noah, proves that a shy Furkin is capable of great deeds like the heroes of the past.

The long-awaited sequel to Wallace''s popular Victorian thriller "Peppermints in the Parlor" finds plucky Emily Luccock facing boarding school, a villainous headmistress, and the temptation of peppermints.

A scientifically-minded fifth grader finds himself in a frightening predicament when he proves that his teacher is a witch.

When Rupert''s friend Amelia is kidnapped by Mordo the warlock, Miss Switch the witch returns in the guise of a substitute teacher to help him rescue her.

In the same dramatic and exciting style of her other Victorian mysteries, Wallace tells the story of 11-year-old Jenny, who arrives from China at her grandfather''s Graymark House. No one recognizes her, so, taking the job of a maid, Jenny must figure out what is going on within the dark hallways. A 2001 Edgar Award nominee.

Timid, eleven-year-old Dylis Rattenbury, afraid to cross the street without holding someone''s hand, idolizes bold, free-spirited, indifferent Victoria Corcoran. When both are sent to boarding school, Dylis is miserable at being separated from her parents, while Victoria seems only concerned that boarding school does not provide room service. With their two roommates she forms a secret club, ostensibly to ward off the "evil forces" in the school, but privately to help get herself expelled. "A boarding school story far from the old formula junior novel."—Children''s Books "An unusual and entertaining novel, well told."—Publishers Weekly

"Train trips through a countryside teeming with bandits. Being carried in a sedan chair up the spine-chillingly narrow path of a mountain. Looking back, it does now seem to be a childhood full of excitement, although we never thought so at the time." Barbara Brooks Wallace writes of her childhood in China, from which all of the events in this book are drawn. "That was because through it all, as children, we were so protected, as much so as Chinese curios in their padded silk brocade boxes, always watched over by a parent or a devoted amah."

A very proper English gentleman''s gentleman is not what a ten-year-old American boy needs in his life. But one appears on Harvey Small''s doorstep when he enters a "free" contest without being aware of the prize. So it''s candlelight dinners alone served by an impeccable Hawkins, and other indignities, Harvey has to suffer. But a gentleman''s gentleman turns out to have its advantages as this young "bachelor" soon finds out!"A winning book for the 4th through 6th grade set."Midwest Book ReviewTelevised as an ABC-TV Special.

After the Air Force transfers his dad from California to Virginia and his mom gets sick, Andy, the intellectual misfit in an athletic family, is forced by a series of disasters to really use his intelligence.

What''s a skunk to do when he finds himself encased in a cardboard box, surrounded by possible enemies, and with his "weapon" taken from him? Luckily he is simply surrounded by the friendly Patch family animals — a cat, two dogs, a goat, and a duck. But Palmer thinks they''re all just foolish backyard pets whose blind trust in humans is sure to be betrayed. When the animals hear they are to be "farmed out" and separated, Palmer lears the meaning of true friendship. "Enthusiastic affection for animals overflows in Wallace''s warm story."—ALA Booklist

Colin Trevelyan, newly orphaned heir to his parents'' fortune, is kidnapped in the night from his ancestral home and taken to the grim Broggin Home for Boys, where he is underfed, overworked, and destined for a short life in a deadly glass factory. This story "immediately hooks readers, who will gobble up this satisfying fare," says "School Library Journal," "Fully realized Victorian melodrama that would make Dickens proud," says "The Bulletin of the Center for Children''s Books," A "Junior Literary Guild" selection and winner of the "Mystery Writers of America" EDGAR Award.

A new friend comes to Amelia''s rescue when she finds herself the victim of a dastardly villain''s fiendish plans.

A young orphan, afraid of being sent to the workhouse, finds himself at the mercy of the unsavory owner of a tavern in Alexandria, Virginia, while he tries to solve the mystery surrounding his past and a missing twin.

Harvey''s love of anything free continues to lead him into countless escapades and dilemmas.

Looking in her fourth grade class for a girl to be her best friend, Claudia is surprised when her new companion turns out to be a boy two years younger.