By Lois Lowry
Four children plot to become orphans, and their dreadful parents plot just as busily to be rid of them.
The four Willoughby children fancy themselves splendidly old-fashioned, and that's the trouble, because old-fashioned stories run on orphans and they still have parents. Two selfish, sour ones, who would be delighted to see the back of them. So the children set about arranging to become orphans, and the parents set about arranging the very same thing from their end. Along the way there's a baby left on a doorstep, a lonely candy tycoon, and a brisk, no-nonsense nanny who turns out to be the only sensible adult in the whole book.
This is the most wickedly funny book on the trail, and it works the way Roald Dahl's do. The grown-ups are so cartoonishly awful, and the whole thing is told with such a straight, arch face, that the meanness plays as a joke instead of landing as anything sad. A child who cheered for how dreadful the aunts were in James and the Giant Peach will probably be right at home here. Lowry is also quietly making fun of the sugary orphan-and-nanny stories of a century ago, though your child can enjoy every bit of the silliness without ever catching the parody. And the vocabulary is gloriously overblown, which makes it a good stretch for a confident reader who likes big words.