THE CLOSED CIRCLE

Jupiter, on the edge of the Pennsylvania Dutch country, is not like the New York City suburb where sixth grader Audrey Royal used to live; some of the expressions are strange and so are the attitudes of her new friends, the self-protective Secret Six, especially their hostility toward long-skitled classmate Hope and highschooler Sylvia Goldberg. Audrey's sister's Jewish friend. Audrey, appreciating both (Hope is ""interesting,"" Sylvia is clever), intercedes but her efforts backfire until a power failure on the night of the Secret Six Jance instruction party. Then the girls remember Hope's hand-cranked Victrola and discover that she's light-footed in her heavy shoes; and when the house starts to smolder (from a tipped candle) Sylvia, also visiting, rescues the girls and has to be hospitalized. The Six become Seven and everybody gathers to grate potatoes and listen to the story of Judah Maccabee at Sylvia's previously-scorned Chanukah party. She's been helping to trim the Royals' Christmas tree and, despite some ""to each his own"" good sense as a counter to envy, this is ornamental tolerance based on flimsy circumstance and false premises.