title: Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times
author:  Emma Trevayne 
description: Feeling bored and unloved in his stuffy, late-nineteenth-century London home, Jack follows an enigmatic magician through a portal into an alternate world. There he explores the eerily familiar, yet frighteningly different city of Londinium, where brass grills embedded in the inhabitants nostrils enable them to breathe heavily polluted air. After being ensnared by the malevolent magician and adopted by the unstable Lady, who rules the land, Jack escapes and works with his few friends to free an ancient creature that can set things right in this damaged world. Clockwork creatures, metal fairies, and industrial pollution give the fantasy a steampunk twist. Like the storys setting, its tone is bleakuncommonly so for a novel apparently aimed at middle-graders. The dramatic plot twists, more than involvement with the mostly adult characters, will draw readers to finish the story, as will the vividly described settings and smooth pacing. The black-and-white illustrations were not available for comment, though the jacket art is intriguing. An unusual take on the alternate-worlds theme. Grades 5-7. --Carolyn Phelan
zlib_text: **_Island Masquerade_**
  
   ** __**
  
  **_Sally Wentworth_**
  
   ** __**
  
  **_![](~export~_files/image002.jpg)_**
  
  **__**
  
  CHAPTER ONE
  
  FAR below them Felicity could see the dark shadow of the plane, like a small
  bird sliding and dipping in the sun over the undulating waves of the ocean.
  Soon, she knew, the moment that she both longed for and dreaded would arrive,
  but there was still a little time to compose herself before the first of the
  chain of islands came into view, and before the plane landed at Trenaka, the
  largest island in the group, and the only one that boasted a runway and a few
  buildings that bore the pretentious title of' Airport'.
  
  Up here, in the cabin of the local aeroplane with many of the native West
  Indian passengers in their brightly coloured clothes, laughing and chattering
  happily among themselves, it was hard to remember that less than twenty-four
  hours ago she had been standing on the windswept platform of a station in a
  small town on the south coast of England sayin