Agent: Stephen Barbara, Foundry Literary + Media. A highly original tale about children caught in a harrowing world of magic and misdeeds. It’s a fairly complicated plot, and although the pacing occasionally lags, Newbery Medalist Schlitz (Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!) delivers many pleasures-fully dimensional children, period details so ripe one can nearly smell them, and droll humor that leavens a few scenes of true horror. The fate of the three children becomes intertwined with Grisini’s old flame, the witch Cassandra Sagredo. By Laura Amy Schlitz Advertisement - Guide continues below Whats Up With the Ending The three main characters in Splendors and Glooms have struggled long and hard in their young lives, so luckily, the book ends on a decidedly hopeful note for all three of them. Grisini is suspected, but he, too, vanishes. Clara is stagestruck by the puppets and taken with one of Grisini’s two assistants, the pretty, well-mannered orphan Lizzie Rose (the other assistant, Parsefall, is an urchin straight out of a Dickensian workhouse).
Clara Wintermute asks her father, a wealthy doctor in 1860 London, to hire Professor Grisini and his Venetian Fantoccini to entertain guests at her 12th birthday party. Anyone who thinks marionettes are creepy will have that opinion reinforced by this dark tale about three children at the mercy of an unscrupulous puppeteer and the witch who pulls his strings.
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