"Will make a theater lover of any young reader." --Booklist
Perfect for fans of The Wednesday Wars, this raucous and delightful
middle grade mystery from Edgar Award-nominated author Martha Freeman is
filled with backstage fun, relatable family drama, and maybe even a
ghost.
Break a leg! That's what you say to actors when what you mean is Have
a good show!. Anything else is bad luck. But when Miss Magnus literally
breaks her leg, eleven-year-old Noah McNichol and the rest of the
Plattsfield Winklebottom Memorial Sixth-Grade Players are out of luck,
left without a director for their production of Hamlet. Coach Fig
comes to the rescue--sort of. He'll direct, even though he is clearly
more interested in whatever is happening on his phone than in directing.
He doesn't even know upstage from downstage! But then something weird
happens: out of nowhere appears a strangely dressed old guy named Mike.
He tells Noah he has theater experience, before disappearing--poof.
Noah has some investigating to do and some decisions to make. Like, does
he care more that their new director might be a ghost or about getting
to make his stage debut? And who is Mike and why has he decided to help?
As things get weirder and weirder, one thing becomes clear: The show
must go on, and Noah will do whatever it takes to make sure that
happens.