The mystery of the haunted dance hall

Cotter (The Dollhouse) delivers an unusually poignant adventure in this 1960s-set retelling of the Grimm brothers' The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Phoebe "Bee" Griffin, 12, is struggling to make friends at Camp Blue Heron, a birding summer program where she feels like everyone considers her "a pudgy girl who is a bit weird." This feeling is exacerbated by her super-human ability to hear across great distances. After stumbling over Jewish camper Zippy, also 12 and with a complementary gift of keen vision, Bee learns that the older campers sneak off at night, returning exhausted with dead flashlight batteries. Bonding over their shared heightened senses and outsider status among their cabinmates, Bee and Zippy embark on a deceptively straight- forward mystery investigation à la Nancy Drew. Things get complicated when bully Felicity inserts herself into the duo's adventure, injecting snarky, destabilizing tension to the budding friendship. Ghostly music initially audible only to Bee leads the tween sleuths to the site of an event that has haunted the camp for decades--and an adolescent longing for romantic connection. Steady pacing and elegant prose combine to craft a warmly bewitching tale about young love and heartache. Main characters cue as white. Ages 9--12. Agent: Hilary McMahon, Westwood Creative Artists. (May)

An enchanting meld of ghostly magic, inspiration from a beloved fairy tale, the otherworldly rituals of summer camp, and the thrills of an adolescent summer spent in nature. When anxious, claustrophobic, 12-year-old Bee is forced to go to a bird-watching summer camp, she doesn't expect to love it. Born with supersensitive hearing, Bee is prepared to spend the summer of 1960 as an outsider at Camp Blue Heron--and sure enough, some mean girls steal her flashlight and leave her terrified and stranded in the dark, half a mile from her tent. Fortunately, she meets Zippy, a spitfire with asthma who has incredible night vision and a mystery to solve. Each night the Hawks, the camp's second-oldest group of girls, have fresh batteries for their flashlights, but come morning, the batteries are inexplicably dead. By all appearances, the Hawks appear to be asleep where they belong, leaving the staff flummoxed. Zippy and Bee decide to investigate. Together, they uncover a twisty mystery that's stranger than anyone could have imagined. In the manner of writers like Anne Ursu and Lauren Wolk, Cotter trusts readers with deep descriptions and a languid buildup to the action. Her writing is ethereal and evocative, evoking the dangers and glittering possibilities of summer nights away from home. Bee and most other characters present white, and Zippy is Jewish. A ghostly mystery steeped in birdsong and fairy-tale magic. ("The Twelve Dancing Princesses")(Ghost story. 10-13) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.