Rereading: MINDY’S MYSTERIOUS MINIATURE by Jane Louise Curry

Mindy Hallam likes to attend estate auctions with her mother in their rural Pennsylvania neighborhood, and at one, she discovers what looks like a very well-made doll house left behind in a barn, and overlooked by the auctioneer. She brings it out and bids on it, enough to win and take it home. When there she begins to clean and study the dollhouse, and finds it even more remarkable than she thought. Every detail and household item is complete. Her parents are also impressed, and Mindy’s mother lets her display a few pieces of the furniture in their antique shop window, not for sale.

That attracts the unwanted attention of a strange man, L. L. Putt, who is soon snooping around their home in search of more miniature items, as if he knows something about the house. Mindy’s dog chases him away, but later she and an elderly neighbor, Mrs. Bright, witness Mr. Putt using a strange machine in the back of his van to enlarge the house to normal human size, destroying the Hallam barn where it was being kept. Mindy and Mrs. Bright go inside, and Mrs. Bright recognizes the house as one she knew many years ago, one of several in the town of Dopple that mysteriously disappeared. Before they can learn more, Mr. Putt again uses his machine to shrink it down to doll house size, with Mindy and Mrs. Bright inside! Thus begins a tale of greed and theft, as Mr. Putt takes the house to his display of a miniature town, all buildings shrunk from Dopple. Once there, they meet other tiny people who were brought there the same way, and they begin to plan a way to escape.

Entertaining story, has some similarities to Mary Norton’s “The Borrowers,” but only because both involve tiny people. Recommended.

The post Rereading: MINDY’S MYSTERIOUS MINIATURE by Jane Louise Curry appeared first on Todd's Blog.