CASSANDRA--LIVE AT CARNEGIE HALL!

An entertaining (and true, according to an author’s note) story of a family that lives at Carnegie Hall in 1944, with the fighting of WWII far away. It nearly breaks 13-year-old Cassandra Lord’s heart when her mother announces that the family will move from their comfortable Connecticut home to be with Papa in New York City. But when she sees exactly where they will be living, she can hardly believe it—in bandleader Papa’s rehearsal studio in Carnegie Hall. It’s far too small, cramped, and stuffy for a family of four; Cassandra desperately misses her past life. The one ray of light, however, is Tony, a tough city boy who also lives there; he loves the city, and begins to show a reluctant Cassandra some of its joys. During a visit to Connecticut, though, Cassandra forgets both New York City and Tony, and dreams of picking up her old life where she left off. This isn’t the first story about a protagonist vacillating between an old home and a new one, and despite the unusual locale, it’s not a very substantial treatment. Still, Hopper evokes the scenes of the city, and what the book lacks in credibility, it makes up for in sheer diversion. (Fiction. 10-13)