The Gypsy Game

Read The Gypsy Game Storyline:

The kids from The Egypt Game are back. What game will they play next? The answer is Gypsies. While April plunges in with her usual enthusiasm, the more Melanie learns, the more something seems to be holding her back. But it's Toby who adds a really new wrinkle when he announces that he himself is a bona fide Gypsy. Plus he can get them some of his grandmother's things to use as real Gypsy props for the new game. What could be more thrilling? Then Toby suddenly and mysteriously disappears, and the kids discover that living as real-life Gypsies may not be as much fun as they thought. How will they find Toby and rescue him from the very real problems that are haunting his life?From Publishers WeeklyThis sequel to The Egypt Game "continues to offer Snyder's well-nigh irresistible combination of suspense, wit and avowal of the imagination," said PW in a starred review. Ages 8-12. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From School Library JournalGrade 5-7. Limited character development, a vague setting, and frequent references to events in Snyder's The Egypt Game (Atheneum, 1972) make this title most accessible to fans of the earlier book. Here, the friends are researching Gypsies for a new game when one of them, Toby Alvillar, finds his life complicated by family problems. Caught in a custody dispute between his father and his grandparents, the boy leaves home. Although Snyder has skillfully updated some aspects of her original story (e.g., making racial differences known through description rather than labeling), her characters seem oddly sheltered. Toby's decision to run away, for example, seems a naive overreaction, given the current realities of urban life and the capture of a child murderer in the previous book. Equally disconcerting is the willingness of the other children to conceal Toby's whereabouts. Despite these occasionally unbelievable plot twists, Snyder succeeds in making readers care about Toby's situation. The game itself, however, does not go well, for the children's discovery of the age-old persecution of Gypsies sours their enthusiasm. Snyder injects a contemporary (and hopeful) note by having her characters translate their discomfort into a resolve to help some present-day "gypsies": the homeless people whom Toby encountered as a runaway. With all the action, information, and emotion packed into the novel, it is little wonder that Snyder relies upon her readers to be already familiar with characters and setting, and it is for them that this companion book will have the most appeal.?Lisa Dennis, The Carnegie Library of PittsburghCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.