ONCE SAID DARLENE

"Darlene liked to make up stories." But the ones she tells here are mostly just descriptions of her plucky behavior in unlikely places: on a boat in the jungle, hitting snakes with her umbrella; in a tent in the desert, crushing bugs; on a ship in a storm, hitting a pirate with her telescope; and in a castle, where she lived as a princess with magic animals. The other kids get fed up with Darlene for making up such stories, but when one little boy believes her, they're both rewarded—by being transported back to Darlene's sure-enough magic castle. "I made up too many stories. So the magician said I had to go away. I had to go to your world. I had to tell the truth. And I could only come back when one person believed me." The message is clearly pro-fantasy, but Sleator's sentences are thumpingly prosaic—and his concocted surprise ending rings no truer than Darlene's stories.