cover image Cuckoo Sister

Cuckoo Sister

Vivien Alcock. Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, $14.95 (160pp) ISBN 978-0-385-29467-6

Alcock's novels are admired here and in her native England for inventive plotting and crackling dialogue that individualize her unusual characters. Katie Seton, 11, tells the story of upheaval in her affluent home after the arrival of Rosie Martin, a tough 13-year-old from a London slum. Rosie is unaware of what's in the note she has been sent to deliver to the Setons by her mother Louise, and is as angry and disbelieving as Katie. Louise confesses she had stolen the Setons' baby Emma, Katie's sister, long given up for dead. While Mr. Seton tries to determine the truth, Rosie/Emma and Katie regard each other as enemies. The stranger with her lurid clothes and Cockney accent is not the sister Katie had always dreamed of. Rosie wants to get back to her free-and-easy neighborhood, friends and mother. She refuses to be Emma, sister to smarmy Katie. As time goes on, though, the girls soften and become allies during crises that lead to the conclusion of the tense, funny mystery. Rosie is not, as Katie has feared, like the cuckoo hatching in another bird's nest, shoving out the legitimate fledgling. (1014)