Stravaganza: City of Stars - Softcover

Mary Hoffman is a bestselling children's author and reviewer. She is the author of the picture book Amazing Grace, which is an international bestseller. The Stravaganza sequence has sold over 180,000 copies and the series has since gone on to sell in over 24 different countries. Mary is also the editor of Armadillo, a children's review magazine. She was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize with her novel The Falconer's Knot. She has three grown-up children and lives with her husband in West Oxfordshire.

Grade 7 Up-This second volume of the trilogy continues the story begun in City of Masks (Bloomsbury, 2002). Georgia, a 15-year-old with a hateful older stepbrother, finds herself transported to 16th-century Talia (Italy), when she goes to sleep holding a little winged horse figure she bought in an antique shop. She awakes in a barn where a coveted, rare winged horse has just been born. She quickly finds herself involved in the intrigues and conflicts between rival families and the preparation for the Stellata, the annual horse race among the competitive elite families. The di Chimici family is seeking to extend its power and control and sees the race as another step in reaching that goal. At the same time, its patriarch is devastated by an accident that left his youngest son, Falco, crippled. When Falco, dismayed at his now limited future, meets Georgia and learns that she can travel across time and place, he resolves to stravagate permanently to her time, where modern medicine may be able to give him a normal life. Georgia eventually helps him to get to England, but his transition to life there seems somewhat contrived and too neatly resolved. The book climaxes with the horse race and Falco's death in his own time when he becomes a modern-day boy. The concept of stravagation is appealing and is used well to create an adventure tale that takes readers back into the 16th century with all its drama. Fans of the first book will find the sequel equally appealing.
Jane G. Connor, South Carolina State Library, Columbia
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