family of gerbil escape artists with a taste for blood (and sunflower seeds). She now lives in Chicago with her dog Binky.Fairlie applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Magician's Bird: A Tuckernuck Mystery, and reported the following:
In The Magician's Bird, Laurie Madison and Bud Wallace are rising seventh graders who are in charge of planning a scavenger hunt for their fellow students, but so far their ideas have all been shot down by Mrs. Abernathy, one of their faculty advisors. On page 69 they show up for another scavenger hunt meeting, but the school is almost deserted. And instead of Mrs. Abernathy, they find their other advisor, Mrs. Hutchins.Learn more about the book and author at Emily Fairlie's website."Bud! Laurie! What are you doing here?"(Okay, I cheated a tiny bit. That last line was actually on page 70.) I think this is a pretty good representation of the book. I'm so glad that page 69 didn't turn out to be an illustration!
Bud and Laurie exchanged a worried glance.
"Scavenger hunt organizational meeting. Remember?"
"Oh, right, that." Mrs. Hutchins laughed again. It was a high-pitched, strained-sounding laugh. It didn't sound normal, especially since nothing was funny.
"I'm sorry kids, we'll have to reschedule. Things have gotten a little hectic here today. Why don't we plan on tomorrow? Or...you know what? I'm sure whatever ideas you've come up with are fine. Why don't you just go with those? Okay, thanks, great, bye." She hustled past them down the hall without a backward glance.
"What was that?" Laurie's eyes were wide.
"Well, something's definitely up," Bud said, staring after Mrs. Hutchins.
"All of our ideas are fine?" Laurie shook her head. "So if we went ahead with the plan to carve a clue into the ceiling of the library, they'd be okay with it?"
"Technically," Bud said. "But I really don't think we should do that one."
"Yeah, okay. But TECHNICALLY," Laurie said.
"Technically, yeah."
Laurie smiled. Maybe this wasn't going to be so bad after all.
--Marshal Zeringue
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