In his first novel for young readers, sportswriter and NPR host Littlefield (Champions: Stories of Ten Remarkable Athletes) creates a nostalgic family story with a dreamlike mystery at its center. Now an adult, narrator Molly recollects the annual August childhood trip that she and her family made to the same Vermont lodge, with its hearty breakfast pancakes, serene lake and morning camp led by a beatific woman, Snow. One summer, Molly wakes in the night and, drawn by the sound of calliope music, discovers a circus dancer deep in the woods. Later she also discovers acrobats, a lion tamer and a gypsy fortuneteller, Nell, who returns to her nursing career when Molly's father slips into a coma due to a bee bite. The circus, familiar to Snow, turns out to be a place of suspended time for people whose journey into adulthood is too painful. With its shifts in perspective—Molly alternates her perspective between that of adult and child—the narrative often reads more like an elegy to childhood and simpler times than a story with the kind of immediacy that will hook children. However, sophisticated readers may well be sustained by the lyricism of the writing. Ages 10-up. (Oct.)
