Mischief and Mayhem: Part 1

By MARGARET MAHY

Jinkie Jensen-Jones had straggly red hair, sticking-out ears, and a nose like a potato.

"With a nose like this, I'm allowed to be nosy," said Jinkie, poking that nose through every hedge and over every fence in Snapper Street. Jinkie loved to pry and spy on all her neighbours as they cooked and quarrelled, dreamed and danced, or did their weeding and washing. She was a real quizzybeak.

But, after sliding along Snapper Street, spying and prying, she always wound up outside the high brick wall that ran around the magician's house.

On the magician's gate was a warning: Trespassers (and Quizzybeaks) will be jinxed written in strange, spidery letters that scuttled about as she tried to read them. Jinkie longed to know what was going on behind that wall. Clapping her ear to the bricks, she listened as hard as she could, but she could only hear hot, hissy murmurings.

Publisher: Shortland

Price: $8.95

Age group: 9-10 years