TROUBLE ON THE TRACKS

Zach is constantly embarrassed by the antics of his younger sister, Eve, a child whom most adults find charming. But when Eve shows off once too often, the siblings—traveling alone in Australia—end up in a confrontation with a pair of bird- smugglers. The thieves throw them off a train in the middle of the outback; Zach and Eve need to survive their ordeal and stop the smugglers, too. Napoli (On Guard, 1996, etc.) works hard in the first half of the book to present Eve as a trial to Zach, and succeeds a little too well: Eve's behavior is so improvident that it's hard to believe she's been released from adult supervision, and Zach remains a commentator, without a personality of his own. By the time the children are battling giant lizards and scorpions in the desert, readers may have lost interest, and exciting action scenes can't quite bolster the ending, in which Zach and Eve learn to get along, the crooks are foiled, the bird is freed, and the children are heroes. (Fiction. 8-12)