MAUDE MARCH ON THE RUN!

After their adventures in The Misadventures of Maude March (2005), 12-year-old Sallie and her older sister Maude try to settle down into quiet, ordinary lives, hoping not to be discovered as outlaws. Maude does little beyond waiting tables, going to church and hanging out at home. Their lives are so quiet that Sallie tells Maude, “You couldn’t have laid any lower if you had set up housekeeping in a rabbit burrow.” But it’s hard to live down a reputation for entering every door “with teeth bared, guns drawn, and coattails flapping in an unnatural gust of wind.” Maude is found out and arrested, along with another notorious outlaw, the Black Hankie Bandit. A jailbreak ensues, and soon the girls are off on a new series of adventures in the old West. Here again are all of the qualities that made its predecessor such fun: old-fashioned storytelling, humor, rollicking adventure and heroines to root for. A natural for reading aloud. (maps) (Fiction. 8-12)