The Sixty-eight Rooms by Marianne Malone

Marianne Malone’s The Sixty-Eight Rooms is a children’s fantasy novel with a great premise. The problem is, she seems to have forgotten to put the fantasy in.

The Sixty-Eight Rooms imagines two sixth-graders, Ruthie and Jack, who discover a magical key on a field trip to the Thorne Rooms in the Art Institute of Chicago, a famous collection of sixty-eight miniature rooms furnished in the styles of various time periods. The key shrinks Ruthie and Jack down so that they can enter the rooms and explore. Even better, it turns out that beyond each room is the entire world of the room’s setting: France just a few years before the French Revolution, Massachusetts during the Salem Witch Trials, etc. The book moves back and forth between Ruthie and Jack�... Read More

The Sixty-eight Rooms by Marianne Malone

The Sixty-Eight Rooms has a really fun premise. Sixth-graders Ruthie and Jack visit the Thorne Miniature Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago, and discover a magic key that enables them to shrink to doll-size and explore the rooms up close. It turns out that each room opens onto a real landscape from the time it portrays, complete with real people that Ruthie and Jack can interact with. I thought this was a great concept, and I remember thinking that Marianne Malone should set a sequel in the Fairy Castle at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Well, as it turns out, Malone has plenty of room for sequels without ever leaving the Thorne Rooms, by virtue of the fact that Ru... Read More