Marta hopes her father will return. He went off to be a soldier and yet to come back. Marta’s mother works cleaning rooms at the Hotel Balzaar. Marta and her mum live in a room upstairs in the hotel. Marta has been told she has to be as quiet as a mouse so she goes unnoticed in the hotel and doesn’t get her mum in trouble and risk her job. She was to ‘speak only if you have no choice.’

Staying in a room all day is hard. So Marta quietly goes down the back stairs of the hotel where she often explores the grand lobby. Here she meets Norman Francis Binwithier, who wears a little hat on his head that at times slips down over one eye. Sometimes he falls asleep and sometimes he produces a a coin from behind one of his hairy ears to give her. In the lobby there is also a painting of an angle wing which fascinates her and a tall grandfather clock that features a cat chasing a mouse around it’s face. She ponders the life of the mouse that must forever run.

One day into the lobby strides a countess with a parrot. She invites Marta to her room where she informs her that she has even stories to tell her. The stories must be told in order and separately. Marta comes to suspect these stories have a secret meaning about her father. But she becomes a little frustrated as some stories don’t seem to make sense or seem relevant.

As the stories unfold Marta dreams of her father the night before she will listen to the seventh story.

This is the second book in Di Camillo’s trio of stories ‘bound by place and mood’. They are fable like and so well written. The characters are cleverly drawn, each quirky and interesting standing out on their own.

The pages includes line drawings from Júlia Sardà that add’s to the fable like quality and bring alive further the personalities for the main players as well as the hotel itself.

Reviewed by Jane Stephens

Age Guide 7+

Read a book review of the first book in the series,
The Puppets of Spelhorst.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kate DiCamillo is one of America’s most beloved storytellers. She is a former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and a two-time Newbery Medalist. Born in Philadelphia, she grew up in Florida and now lives in Minneapolis.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Júlia Sardà is the illustrator of many books for young readers, including The Queen in the Cave, which she also wrote, and Moving the Millers’ Minnie Moore Mine Mansion: A True Story by Dave Eggers. She lives in Barcelona.