An interesting fantasy for children written in the late 1960s. Ellen wakes up on her tenth birthday and finds a silver crown on her pillow; a crown made of material which can be folded (which becomes relevant later when she has to carry it with her long distances and eventually hide it). An imaginative child, she decides to go for a walk to the local park and play at being a queen there as she often does. She thinks the crown might have come from her Aunt Sarah who is the only adult she knows who doesn't just pretend to believe Ellen is a queen: she says she is and means it.

While at the park, Sarah tries on the crown and it has the effect of making her calm and clear minded, something she needs shortly afterwards when she discovers that her family have apparently all died in a mysterious fire while she was out playing. And shortly afterwards, a robber in a green hood, who murders a shopkeeper and a policeman from whom she was trying to get help, seems to be implicated in the arson on her house. Meanwhile, Ellen sends a postcard to tell her aunt she is coming to see her because she is now on her own, and a series of men start to help Ellen in what, to a modern reader, seems rather creepy - even in the 1960s there were warnings about not to get into cars with strange men, for example.

I won't say much more about the plot, but other characters do appear, especially Otto an eight year old child prodigy who is an expert tracker, animal trapper, knife thrower and tree climber, having apparently taught himself those things. There is also a rather entertaining talking crow called Richard who is Otto's pet. Otto has been raised by a resourceful older woman who he now persists in believing is his mother although she has tried to tell him otherwise, after she found him wandering in the woods near her house when he was a toddler. She wants Otto to go with Ellen on her journey to Aunt Sarah's, as she thinks Sarah will adopt him and wean him off this idea about his mother and also break a rather destructive habit - he has been causing trucks on the nearby highway to crash so that he can scavenge their contents. The two children are menaced on their journey by the force behind the robber and other sinister men.

Probably because of the age of the children, and the period when this was written, the relationship between them is just simple uncomplicated friendship. Although Ellen is quite forward thinking and a planner, the story does conform in some ways to 1960s ideas of appropriate roles for boys and girls: the boy is the active one who is more capable physically and the girl is the one who injures herself and holds them up. However, she also can't be controlled in the way that most other people, including Otto, turn out to be later in the story.

I enjoyed the book on the whole but unanswered questions piled up by the ending, such as, if the crown has the effect it is shown to have at the end of the story on the evil force behind everything, then why was that force not affected whenever Ellen wore her crown - which at one point, left on her own with a sprained ankle for days, she does for hours at a time. At the very least, those whom she meets later (avoiding spoilers) should perhaps comment in puzzlement that this force has been zoning out and not giving orders for long periods of time recently. Also, I expected that there would be an explanation for Otto's origin, and that we might find out that Ellen's family somehow survived - she seems to get over her multiple bereavement very rapidly. The denoument of the story, which requires a third character to somehow evade hot pursuit and return to the very heart of the villains' hideout - when access to that was shown to involve authorised personnel touching a handplate and there were other perils as well - was a bit weak.

I've also read, since finishing the book, that there were apparently two endings in the American edition. The version I read was published in the UK and involves only a short postscript which explains who sent the crown to Ellen, but the whole issue of how the villains found out she had it is left open. On the whole, the build up to the story is stronger than the actual resolution and for that reason my rating balances out at 3 stars. ( )

good - Ruthie

Kids/YA fantasy from the author of the famous Mrs. Frisby & the Rats of Nimh. I thought I'd never read this before, but at chapter 21, it suddenly came rushing back to me... The first half of the book is taken up by Our Young and Suddenly-Orphaned Heroine striking out on her own and fleeing the mysterious bad-guys, and I guess that wasn't terribly memorable to me as a child... but when the spooky evil thought-controlling reform-school comes into the picture - that, I guess, I found memorable. ( )

This was a fun, well-written book. Specifically for the younger reader, the book is a page-turner with lots of action and rich characters.

The protagonist, Ellen, finds a fast friend in Otto, as she sets out on an adventure that may or may not end up with her being the queen of ... well, something.

Very entertaining, and a book this size and this pleasant to read is sure to encourage tentative readers to read more.

Recommended. ( )

A masterfully subtle question-creating book for ages 8-ish and up: not a mere quest, not merely kids and magic, not merely a chase, not merely villains, but a question asked in many ways: What do you do when someone who means well sets off a chain of events that can cause harm? - What do you do when that person really, really means well but causes real, terrible harm, or could have done? Whether it's the secret of the black crown (no spoiling!) or the question of what to do with Otto's road sign vandalism, how far to trust strangers or how far to trust an organization, this book is the kind I love best in all children's fiction: one that plants the seed of a question to be answered over and over in adulthood, with more wisdom for having read this book.

CAVEAT: MAKE SURE YOU READ THE BRITISH EDITION. It has a different ending, and frankly, an infinitely better one. The American one explains everything and is tedious and out-of-character. ( )