From School Library Journal
Grade 5-8 Aiken's tales of Dido Twite are among her rollicking best, and Dido and Pa is no exception. Reunited at long last with Simon (whom readers first met in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase Doubleday, 1962), Dido has just begun to describe her adventures when her Pa, having decoyed Simon, kidnaps his daughter and returns with her to London. The evil Eisengrim , head of the Hanoverians with whom Mr. Twite has long been involved, is plotting to overthrow King Richard and install his own puppet, a look-alike whom Pa expects Dido to prepare for his role as royal imposter. In an operatic plot filled with shifting scenes and shifty characters, complications are presented, compounded, and finally undone, with nearly all of the right people in the right places at the end. Mr. Twite, however, is absent from the final curtain call; and Dido, although painfully aware that her pa is bad beyond helping, recognizes the worth of his music and knows that without him, her life will lack some of its rich color. Aiken's talent for language and dialogue gives voice to the vigorous London street life she portrays: the children of poverty, the sellers of foodstuffs, the laborers. Building one subplot upon another, she moves from scene to scene with the ease of a skilled dramatist, creating entanglements that, like a cat's cradle, all come neatly together at the end of the tale. Satisfying. Dudley B. Carlson, Princeton Public Library, N.J.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Joan Aiken, daughter of the American writer Conrad Aiken, was born in Rye, Sussex, England, and has written more than sixty books for children, including The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.
