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THE TWIN IN THE TAVERN by Barbara Brooks Wallace

THE TWIN IN THE TAVERN

by Barbara Brooks Wallace

Pub Date: Oct. 29th, 1993
ISBN: 0-689-31846-4
Publisher: Atheneum

Teddy's Aunt and Uncle Bunz, who've raised him since the death of his parents, have also died at the outset of this fast-paced mock-gothic. To avoid being sent to the workhouse, Teddy falls in with the villains who've taken his aunt and uncle's possessions. He sleeps under the kitchen table at the Dog's Tail Inn, eats meager scraps left on plates, and works unceasingly, with the threat of being shut into the icehouse for the slightest infraction hanging over his head. Meanwhile, his uncle's last words ring in his ears: ``Nothing is what you think. You are not really ours...Find your twin and you...will know who you are...Be careful lad...Trust no one!'' Wallace (Peppermints in the Parlor, 1980) populates her story with wonderfully creepy, sinister, and mysterious characters—the reader's never sure whether Teddy is confiding in the right people when he begins to search for his twin, while the denouement makes a dandy surprise for him and the reader alike. (Fiction. 8-12)