  | Key to extraordinary Author: Lloyd, Natalie | |
| Price: $17.29 | ||
Summary:
Twelve-year old orphan Emma Casey lives by a haunted graveyard in her Tennessee town, giving tours, and helping her brother and Granny Blue with the family bakery, and waiting for the destiny dream of her ancestors--but when it comes it shows her only a key, and she finds that she must solve a ghostly mystery that has haunted her town for generations.
Download a Teacher's Guide
| Accelerated Reader Information: Interest Level: MG Reading Level: 4.70 Points: 7.0 Quiz: 179880 | Reading Counts Information: Interest Level: 3-5 Reading Level: 4.20 Points: 11.0 Quiz: 67455 | |
Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews (02/01/16)
Booklist (05/01/16)
Full Text Reviews:
Booklist - 05/01/2016 Ghosts and magic weave through this warmly sentimental tale of small-town life. News that Granny Blue is thinking of selling the declining Boneyard Café to a developer is hard on 12-year-old force of nature Emma Pearl. Spurred to action, she searches the nearby cemetery for a fabled treasure said to be guarded by a ghost known as “the Conductor.” The plot plays second fiddle to a cast full of lovable, mildly eccentric locals, and to the setting itself: Blackbird Hollow is a Tennessee town where strange flowers bloom year round, ghosts exist, and Emma’s ancestors have left her a strange legacy. Emma makes homey observations about friends and neighbors, longs to save the café, and yearns for the life-changing “Destiny Dream” that comes to all the women in her family, and the result is a narrative as rich and sweet as the café’s own peach-lavender muffins. A climactic whirlwind leads to a triumphant close, but one character’s observation that “Everything wonderful is possible” is the tale’s true touchstone. - Copyright 2016 Booklist.
