Kai and her mother moved to Houston. They often went to visit Lavinia and Doodle on weekends, and Kai would play her violin in the evenings. They found a sweet little one-story house in a lovely, safe neighborhood with a community pool and a skate park nearby. They were right next door to a woman who had planted her whole yard with cornflowers. School was set to start in a week, and Kai had the strangest feeling that she would make friends there. Maybe even a Best Friend. Doodle had shown her how.
Kai knew now that every story—even her own—held its own magic, and all she had to do was keep turning the pages until the eventual very real, very happy ending.
Acknowledgments
I WOULD LIKE TO gratefully acknowledge the people who made it possible for me to write this book, and those who made it impossible for me to give up.
Thank you to An Na, who gently steered me away from the wrong story; to Mark Karlins, who steered me toward the right one; to Rita Williams-Garcia, who helped me understand the characters; and to Kathi Appelt, who brought me all the way home.
I would like to thank James Patterson for his generosity, which enabled me to dedicate myself to this project. Thank you to the staff of the National Museum of Funerary History, who helpfully provided information on nineteenth-century casket factories.
I must thank my husband, Ali Usman, and my other Lahori advisors and readers: Aimen Khan, Uzma Sajid, and Annum Khan. I would also like to thank other early readers: Kathryn Gaglione, Marguerite Belkin, Ellen Wittlinger, Nancy Werlin, Pat Collins, and Liza Ketchum.
I have a special velvet-lined box of thanks for Rosemary Stimola and Kristen Pettit, who not only believed in this story, but have believed in me for a long, long time.
And, of course, thanks and love to the Allies in Wonderland.
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About the Author
Photo by Ellen Augaren
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR LISA PAPADEMETRIOU is the author of Middle School: My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar and Homeroom Diaries (both with James Patterson), the Confectionately Yours series, and many other novels for middle grade readers. Her books have appeared on the Bank Street Best Books of the Year list, the NYPL Books for the Teen Age, the Texas Lone Star Reading List, among others. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. You can visit her online at www.lisapapa.com.
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Credits
Cover art © 2015 by Julie McLaughlin
Cover design by Sarah Creech
Copyright
A TALE OF HIGHLY UNUSUAL MAGIC. Copyright © 2015 by Lisa Papademetriou. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Papademetriou, Lisa.
A tale of highly unusual magic / Lisa Papademetriou. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: “Two girls on opposite sides of the planet connect through a mysterious book, whose phantom narrator guides them into spinning a story about the past that will affect their futures”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-237121-8 (hardback)
EPub Edition © September 2015 ISBN 9780062371072
[1. Books—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.P1954Tal 2015 2014047817
[Fic]—dc23 CIP
AC
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15 16 17 18 19 PC/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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Lisa Papademetriou, A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic
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