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Reviewed by:
  • At the Firefly Gate
  • Elizabeth Bush
Newbery, Linda At the Firefly Gate. Fickling/Random House, 2007 [160p] Library ed. ISBN 0-385-75114-8$17.99 Trade ed. ISBN 0-385-75113-1$15.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 4-6

It was the dream of Henry's parents, certainly not Henry himself, to move from London out to the country, and now he finds himself facing a new school and his parents' efforts to arrange a friendship for him with sulky next-door neighbor, Grace. He actually gets along far better with Grace's great aunt Dottie, with whom he promptly forms an unspoken bond when he realizes that she, like himself, sees a mysterious figure that occasionally appears at the garden gate and seems to have come from another time. As Henry makes friends with kids from the neighborhood, he also begins to unravel threads of local history that ultimately connect an abandoned World War II airfield, Dottie, a chum's grandfather, and the ghostly presence in the garden. This is about as tame and gentle as ghost stories get, and there's never much doubt that there's romance rather than peril behind the apparitions. Still, the story Henry uncovers involves an act of wartime heroism that compensates for any disappointment in the haunting department, and the supernatural lovers' reunion he is privileged to witness should touch even cynical grade-school hearts.

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