MIRANDA GOES TO HOLLYWOOD

In this sequel to Miranda and the Movies (1989), Miranda Gaines and her Aunt Lucy travel by train to Hollywood to join up with and Bobby, streetwise orphaned young actor who is Miranda’s best friend, and C.J., the charming if rascally director of silent movies in which Miranda hopes to act. Upon arrival, Lucy sorts out C.J.’s disastrous financial mess while Miranda and Bobby star in a series of low-budget westerns, and get bit parts in epochal movies such as D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. Headstrong young heroine! Charming rogue! Plucky orphan! With its careening plot, overblown descriptive passages, and larger-than-life characters, this novel is similar to the overlong melodramas Miranda finds under production in Hollywood. But if much of the humor is over the heads of the target audience, and if too much movie jargon remains oblique, this broad, entertaining period piece carries readers along with its sheer good spirits and provides them with a vivid glimpse of an unfamiliar era. (Fiction. 10-12)