STEP BY WICKED STEP

A sleepover in a reputedly haunted house becomes a night of revelations and storytelling for five classmates in this lightly therapeutic tale. Fine (Flour Babies, 1994, etc.) sets a deliciously spooky scene: On a dark and stormy night, Colin, Rob, Claudia, Ralph, and Pixie discover a hidden door in their gloomy quarters, and behind that a dusty diary titled ``Richard Clayton Harwick—My Story. Read and Weep.'' They settle down for a dramatic reading and hear a bitter tale of the death of a father, his usurpation by a hated stepfather, and the subsequent demise of Harwick's entire family. This sparks the children—each with a very different experience—to tell about their own divorced or absent parents, of coping with siblings and stepsiblings, shuttling among various residences, meeting new adults, living with or letting out resentments. Offering a wide variety of alternative living arrangements, plus a selection of apothegms—``Everyone's story is different,'' ``Misery isn't a baton in a relay race . . . you can't get rid of it just by passing it on''—Fine doesn't conceal her agenda or create much of a plot, but gives her characters distinct voices and attitudes and helps readers understand that wounds do heal, if allowed to. (Fiction. 9-12)