FINDING SERENDIPITY

A middle-grade fantasy about the magic in writing stories.

The tale begins ordinarily enough: Young Tuesday McGillycuddy is waiting for her mother, famous author Serendipity Smith, to finish the latest book in her wildly popular Vivienne Small series so they can have a family vacation. When Serendipity doesn’t emerge from her studio one evening, Tuesday and her father, Denis, investigate. They find Serendipity gone and the window in front of her typewriter desk wide open. Denis seems unperturbed, assuring Tuesday that her mother will be home by breakfast, but Tuesday can’t sleep. Tiptoeing to the studio, Tuesday discovers a silver box containing a gossamer thread that spells “The End.” Intrigued, Tuesday places the thread on the last page of her mother’s manuscript, thinking that if the story ends, then her mother will return, but the words won’t stick. Deciding to start with a beginning, Tuesday begins typing a story. Her words lift off the page and form a magical thread that carries Tuesday and her dog, Baxterr, to the land where stories are written. Banks tells her story in a comfortable bedtime-story–ish third-person narrative voice that’s entirely appropriate to the situation. Readers will laugh as Tuesday meets a self-absorbed successful teenage writer, they will duly respect the knowledgeable Librarian, and they will thrill as Tuesday and Vivienne Small partake in a rollicking adventure together.

An original, wholehearted affirmation of the written word and the imagination.