Every person and creature in The Stair in the Wall — as in life — has their own little quirks and faults..and you can be sure someone is going to point out each and every one of them.
But in Greenwood — the world 9-year-old Sylvia discovers when she finds the stair in the wall of her grandparents’ forbidding house — people’s differences are treated with love.
It all begins when Sylvia’s adventure-loving mother sets out to see the world – alone. Sylvia’s sad Papawhiskers buries himself in his bird collection. And Sylvia is packed off to her grandparents’ forbidding mansion, where everything she does — and everything she is, with her mocha-colored skin and long curly black hair — seems to be wrong.
Until, that is, she discovers the stair in the wall.
Every child from a broken family wants to bring her parents back together through her own efforts. And every child dreams of a group of friends – however “funny” and strange they are – who band together to solve each other’s problems.
Both wishes come true in The Stair in the Wall, a journey through a world teeming with helpful animals, scary ghosts and the twisting by-ways of a child’s imagination. Is the community of Greenwood really Sylvia’s own dream world? Is the gray wraith in reality Sylvia’s sadness at her separation from her parents? Each reader must make up her or his own mind.
The Stair in the Wall captures the hopes, dreams and fears of kids on the verge of discovering who they are…and what they can accomplish through their own courage and loving acceptance of others.
The Stair in the Wall is written in rich language in the tradition of The Chronicles of Narnia and The Wizard of Oz.
About the Author: Claire Ortalda is an award-winning fiction writer whose adult fiction frequently explores the juxtaposition of the whimsical with the realities and challenges of adult life. This is her first work of juvenile fiction. www.claireortalda.com
