The Sixty-Eight Rooms- Marianne Malone

Title: The Sixty-Eight Rooms
Author: Malone, Marianne
Publisher: Random House, 2010
ISBN-10: 0375857109

Genre: Adventure
Reading Level: 730 Lexile
Interest Level: 8+

Readers Annotation: 68 miniature rooms perfectly made to show a different time period. Are they just to look at or is there something magical about them?

Plot:
Ruthie and Jack are ready to visit the Art Institute of Chicago. It is said to be 68 rooms created in 1930 by a woman to perfectly replicate rooms of different times. Everything is perfect and the details are unbelievable. While looking at the rooms, Ruthie finds a key that shrinks her. She is then able to enter the rooms and explore them. She wants to go back and learn so much more. She and Jack find a way to shrink him as well so they can both explore the rooms together. As they spend time in the rooms, they discover more about themselves, the past and the present. The two need to be careful not to be caught in the rooms as well as manage to not be gone too long and worry their parents.

Review:
This book is well crafted and explores the imagination while leaving enough real experiences that the reader could imagine themselves in the children's position. Jack's mother is a struggling artist and they have a hard time making ends meet but she continues to pursue her art. Ruthie has been fascinated with the rooms a long time and the things they learn about the past in these rooms makes the story propel forward. This book starts slow, but when it gets going, the adventures continue through the book.

Similar Materials:

Masters of Disaster- Gary Paulsen
Stealing Magic: A Sixty-Eight Rooms Adventure- Marianne Malone
13 Treasures- Michelle Harrison