Kids into Books: The Good Fortunes Gang

This weeks title: The Good Fortunes Gang

Author: Margaret Mahy

Illustrator: John Farman

Publisher: Random, $9.95

Age Group: 8-11 years


He slammed the car door behind him. He was on his own in a new world.

Pete stood for a moment, glancing left and right. Although the shops looked ordinary enough, they were still shops in another country - a land of legend - for he was standing in Fairfield, his father's home town. 'I remember, back in Fairfield ...' his father would say, beginning a hair-raising story of his own childhood.

And now the shops were Fairfield shops, those hills beyond them were the Fairfield hills, and the sky overhead was Fairfield sky.

In a few minutes he would be meeting his New Zealand grandparents for the first time and, that afternoon, relations from all over Fairfield would be gathering for a Fortune family reunion. The reunion, it was agreed, had to come before anything else.

After that, Pete and his family would be free to begin unpacking and moving into their new house - which was also an old house ... the very house his father had lived in when he was a boy.