Saturday, December 29, 2007

Two More By Margaret Peterson Haddix

Haddix, Margaret Peterson. 2005. Double Identity.

Bethany has always thought her parents acted oddly. She didn’t live like other children. Her parents were different. She’s almost thirteen years old and had never spent a night away from her parents. In fact, her parents had never gone out and left her with a babysitter even. They were with her constantly. They acted as if she might disappear or vanish if they were separated. They were holding onto her much too tightly to be ‘normal’ or what Bethany thought of as normal. Yet when her mother begins to have nervous breakdowns--to cry irrationally for days or weeks, she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that her parents are keeping a big secret from her. The secret becomes even more of a mystery--a dangerous mystery--when they pack her up and take her to visit an aunt she’s never known. An aunt she’s never even heard mentioned. Dropped off on her aunt’s doorstep, she is treated by the town like she’s a ghost. Something is definitely not normal here. Can Bethany figure out the secret before her mother completely loses it? Why does everyone act so strangely around her? And why is everyone calling her Elizabeth?

Haddix, Margaret Peterson. 2003. Escape From Memory.

Kira was just a giggling girl at a slumber party who let herself be hynotized for laughs, but suddenly her life is being turned upside down and this ‘laughing matter’ is becoming an issue of life and death. Kira remembers something odd--something that doesn’t fit in with the stories she’s been told about her life. What does it all mean? Seeing her mother’s reaction, Kira knows something is being hidden from her...but she couldn’t have predicted the magnitude of the secret. Someone is willing to KILL to find out just what Kira knows. ESCAPE FROM MEMORY is an exciting, fast-paced science fiction novel.

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