Stealing Magic: A Sixty-Eight Rooms Adventure (The Sixty-Eight Rooms Adventures)

MARIANNE MALONE is the mother of three grown children, a former art teacher, and the cofounder of the Campus School Middle School for Girls in Urbana, Illinois. She and her husband divide their time between Urbana and Washington, DC. This is her first novel. For Teacher's Guides (including common core tie-ins) and more, visit MarianneMalone.com.
From the Hardcover edition.

This sequel to the popular The Sixty-Eight Rooms (2010) begins just a few months after the first book ended. Sixth-graders Ruthie and Jack are just coming down from their adventure at the Art Institute of Chicago’s minature Thorne Rooms. Well, really, inside the Thorne Rooms, as a magic key allowed them to shrink and enter the dollhouse-proportioned spaces. Now the key once more leads them back in time—until it’s stolen. The tension is cranked up even higher as the kids try to help a Jewish girl in 1937 Paris escape the Holocaust and also meet a slave girl in pre–Civil War Charleston. These events may be one too many, causing the magical machinations to become more complicated than ever. Still, there’s a respectable villian, plenty of action, and a nice dose of art and history to keep readers involved. Oh, and magic. Don’t forget the magic. Grades 4-7. --Ilene Cooper