"Riveting allegory" sounds like an oxymoron, but this novel lives up to the billing. From a young man chained in prison, the story turns to Heloise, a child raised by an unloving godmother who runs a mysterious museum from which visitors emerge troubled and shocked. Raised without toys or playmates, her only book a much-censored Bible, Heloise takes refuge in her imagination. When she finds a doll hidden in her room and discovers the secret of the museum, her true journey begins. The riveting plot ranges far and wide, finally coming full circle. Along the way, readers meet dolls that come to life and dolls that don't; the Society of Caged Birds; a church choir of orphan girls; hate, suffering, joy and, most of all, love. Although the tropes are Christian, this is not an allegory of Christianity like the Chronicles of Narnia but of the love and the common humanity that underlie and connect all faiths. Beautifully written, this work by a seasoned Australian author revisits territory once owned by Robert Cormier: the enthralling moral fable. (Fantasy. 11 & up)Read full book review >

Goopily sentimental, drearily didactic, with not a single emotion un-telegraphed or story trope un-pilfered, this forced effort will appeal to only the most unsophisticated romantic. The 14-year-old of the title is a ballet dancer who lives in an odd building of many stories with her grandmother, also a dancer, and the memory of her mother, who died onstage dancing the dying swan. Clair-de-Lune does not speak, but she is devoted to dance while under the severe hand of her controlling grandmother. She meets a mouse named Bonaventure who can speak, however, and who is teaching dance to his fellow mice. Bonaventure reveals a hidden doorway in Clair-de-Lune's building that leads to a monastery, where a young monk, Brother Inchmahome, encourages her to think about why she cannot speak. There are dreams and portents; nasty girls who tease her; a magical bird with a red-gold heart who remains mysteriously just out of reach; death; redemption; and surprise revelations. Twaddle—and sloppy twaddle at that. (Fiction. 9-12)Read full book review >