Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0688149227, Paperback)

A magic show is in town!

See Jane float through the air. Watch the head in the box move its lips and talk (that's Paul behind the whiskers). See tall, light-hearted Mr. Mysterious--Pa himself--make a cow lay an egg and a chicken give milk. Follow the adventures and high comedy of this family of magicians traveling in a show wagon through the Old West. The wonder workers are heading for California, where Pa intends to retire the show so that the kids can go to school. But the frontier has tricks of its own up its sleeve, and the magicians find themselves in hairbreadth escapes and nose-to-nose encounters with villains galore--including the notorious and short-tempered Badlands Kid.

Mr. Mysterious & Company, otherwise known as the Hackett family, is a traveling magic show making its way across the country toward California. When this family passes through town in their brightly painted wagon, anything can happen--even the capture of a notorious bandit, the Badlands Kid! Here is the Newbery Medalist's first book for children, reissued for a new generation of readers.