WITCH TWINS

Two novice Philadelphia witches discover both that magic is harder to control than it seems and that they’re not as inseparable as they supposed, in this lighthearted family story with a twist, from the author of Dive (1999). Outwardly identical, inwardly “as different as the sun and moon, peaches and peanut butter, or long division and poetry,” Claire and Luna Bundkin “love-love-love” many of the same things, but “hate-hate-hate” the news that their father has proposed to brassy Houston fashion designer Fluffy Demarkle. As the two search for appropriate spanners to throw into the works, subplots bubble up: the twins come up for their first Witch Tests (dubbed “GST’s”); a bobbled love spell gets a bully off older brother Justin’s back in hilariously effective fashion; and for the first time in their school careers, Claire and Luna are placed into separate classes—a separation that turns out to be considerably less traumatic than expected. With deceptive offhandedness, Griffin speeds the tale along to the climactic wedding, which the repentant twins manage to rescue from the results of their own spell-casting in the nick of time, earning in the process their witch’s stars and a pair of kitten familiars to boot. Preteen readers will “love-love-love” watching these seemingly ordinary 11-year-olds in action. (Fiction. 10-12)