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Gr 5-8 Abandoned as a baby, Annika is found and adopted by Ellie and Sigrid, cook and housemaid for three professors. Growing up in early-20th-century Vienna, she learns to cook and clean and is perfectly happy until a beautiful aristocrat appears and claims to be her mother, sweeping her off to a new life in a crumbling castle in northern Germany. Annika is determined to make the best of things, and it takes a while for her to realize that her new "family" has many secrets, most of them na...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

A foundling, a pretender, a trunk of jewels—Ibbotson's latest has all the eventfulness of a Victorian orphan adventure. In addition, it's shot through with good-humored matter-of-factness, and especially with Ibbotson's affection for her setting—1908 Vienna. Golden-haired, peasant-faced orphan Annika has been raised by cook Ellie and housekeeper Sigrid to be "the best-trained child in Vienna," not to mention an imaginative chef, and ...Log In or Sign Up to Read More