The Sky Is Falling

Readers are unlikely to be attracted to this book by its cover, which features a murky montage of sullen, disproportionate figures looming against a forbidding landscape. That's too bad, for this work is every bit as engrossing as the author's last two, The Hideaway and I Am the Universe . Just after Annah's 14th birthday in 1931, all her family's money is lost in the stock market, her father is fired, and she is sent away from her comfortably affluent home in a Boston suburb to live with her aunt in a lakefront cottage in rural New Hampshire. Taunted as a ``summer person'' by her new schoolmates, Annah befriends Dorie, also an outcast, but at the opposite end of the social scale. As their friendship develops, Annah learns some important lessons about poverty and self-sacrifice, just as Dorie learns that being proud doesn't preclude accepting charity. Corcoran warmly evokes the Depression era in telling detailMoxie sodas, marcelled hairwhile making some timeless observations about loving relationships and the common thread that unites people regardless of social distinctions. Ages 8-12. (September)