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Informationen zum Autor Lauren Baratz-Logsted has written books for all ages. Her books for children and young adults include the Sisters Eight series, The Education of Bet and Crazy Beautiful . She lives with her family in Danbury, Connecticut. Klappentext A rather large problem has befallen the Huit girls. (Sisters, actually. Octuplets to be exact.) One particular New Year's Eve, the girls wait for their mommy to bring them hot chocolate and their daddy to return with more wood for the fire. But they don't. Mommy and Daddy, that is. They're gone. Poof! Maybe dead?no one knows for sure. You must see the problem here. Eight little girls on their own, no mommy or daddy to take care of them. This is not a good thing. So now these little girls, must take care of themselves. Get to school, cook the meals, feed the cats (eight of them, too), and pay the bills. They can't ask for help, oh no. Any self-respecting adult would surely call in social services, and those well-meaning people would have to split them up. After losing their parents, being split up would be completely unbearable. At the same time, the question remains:What happened to Mommy and Daddy? The Sisters Eight (as they are called, affectionately and otherwise) are determined to find out. Luckily, they do seem to have someone or something helping them. Notes keep appearing behind a loose brick in the fireplace. It's a good old-fashioned mystery with missing (or dead) parents, nosy neighbors, talking refrigerators, foul-smelling fruitcake (is there any other kind?), and even a little magic. Eight little girls, eight cats, and one big mystery?let the fun begin! Durinda's Dangers, wherein Durinda, second in line, discovers her power and gift. Boy, is her power a doozy! Leseprobe Chapter One It was the first week in February, and it wasn’t like our lives were getting any easier. Our parents, having disappeared on New Year’s Eve when Mommy went to the kitchen to get eggnog and Daddy went out to the woodshed for more firewood, were still missing. Or dead. We still hadn’t found a way to get into the home of our evil neighbor the Wicket so we could find out what she had stolen from Mommy’s Top Secret folder. And we were still in the third grade at the Whistle Stop, a private school running from kindergarten through twelfth grade, where we were forced to wear ugly yellow plaid uniforms. We were at the Whistle Stop that morning. Our only classmates were Will Simms, a towheaded boy we liked, and Mandy Stenko, a redheaded girl we didn’t. Our teacher, Mrs. McGillicuddy, known to us Eights as the McG, was going on and on about something. The McG was a tall blonde with a long nose, on the bridge of which perched horn-rimmed glasses. On this particular morning, the thing she was going on and on about was hearts. “The heart,” the McG said, “is the organ that pumps blood through your body.” “I’m pretty sure we knew that already,” Georgia said. “Is there going to be a test on this?” Petal wanted to know. The McG ignored us. “The heart,” the McG went on, “is also one of four symbols on playing cards, the other three being the club, the diamond, and the spade.” “Does this have anything to do with you giving Will soccer trading cards for his birthday last month?” Durinda asked. “Will doesn’t even like soccer,” Rebecca pointed out, forgetting how Annie had encouraged us to pretend he did on the day the McG had given Will the cards. The McG glared at us. “Sorry,” Jackie said with a peacemaking shrug. “We thought you’d want to know.” The McG ignored us some more. “There are several holidays in the month of February,” the McG went on. “Some are national, like Presidents’ Day; one has to do with predicting the weather for the next six weeks; and the third is of a far more important ...
