Dido and Pa

by Joan Aiken

Overview

Readers who have followed Dido Twite’s escapades in Black Hearts in Battersea and Nightbirds on Nantucket will welcome her return in another wild adventure. Now back in print, Dido and Pa continues the Wolves Chronicles, the exhilarating and imaginative series that stemmed from Joan Aiken’s classic The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.
Dido Twite is finally back home in London and reunited with her old friend Simon, now the Duke of Battersea and a favorite of King Richard. But no sooner does Dido start to settle in than her rascally father, Abednago, appears and drags her off into the night. Soon Dido finds herself caught up in the midst of another dastardly Hanoverian conspiracy: a plot involving a mysterious double for the king, the miraculous healing powers of music, and a spy network made up of abandoned street children called lollpoops. Meanwhile, out in the forest, starving wolves are closing in on the city . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780547562384
Publisher:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date:	10/28/2002
Series:	Royal Brides , #7
Sold by:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	136,784
File size:	195 KB
Age Range:	10 - 12 Years

About the Author

Joan Aiken, daughter of the American writer Conrad Aiken, was born in Rye, Sussex, England, and has written more than sixty books for children, including The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.

Editorial Reviews

Simon, first met in Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, meets up with Dido Twite in Dido and Pa (1986), which PW called "a tempestuous and atmospheric sequel to The Stolen Lake." Here, Dido returns to England only to be sucked into her father's dangerous plot to usurp the King's power. "Almost nonstop, the story's thrilling actions rush onward."

Publishers Weekly

Dido has just been happily reunited with her long-time friend Simon, but their joy is short-lived when Dido's father enters the picture and kidnaps (if you can call it that) her. Dido knows her father wants something, but what could it be? Her father is always telling lies, but it's not the lies she is afraid of. Instead, Dido fears facing the frightful truth. Meanwhile, Simon and his sister, Sophie, are frantically searching for the well-loved Dido, who at the same time is being warned not to go back to them. Joan Aiken has created wonderfully colorful and well described characters that will take readers away into a series of adventures in London. These round and dynamic characters grow through their actions and the actions of those around them. Dido is a kind, strong-willed girl, while her father is musical, mischievous and greedy, dreaming always of the fortune Dido will make if she succeeds in her task...whatever that may be. 2003 (orig. 1986), Houghton Mifflin Company,
— Liz Figliola

Children's Literature

Gr 5-8 Aiken's tales of Dido Twite are among her rollicking best, and Dido and Pa is no exception. Reunited at long last with Simon (whom readers first met in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase Doubleday, 1962), Dido has just begun to describe her adventures when her Pa, having decoyed Simon, kidnaps his daughter and returns with her to London. The evil Eisengrim , head of the Hanoverians with whom Mr. Twite has long been involved, is plotting to overthrow King Richard and install his own puppet, a look-alike whom Pa expects Dido to prepare for his role as royal imposter. In an operatic plot filled with shifting scenes and shifty characters, complications are presented, compounded, and finally undone, with nearly all of the right people in the right places at the end. Mr. Twite, however, is absent from the final curtain call; and Dido, although painfully aware that her pa is bad beyond helping, recognizes the worth of his music and knows that without him, her life will lack some of its rich color. Aiken's talent for language and dialogue gives voice to the vigorous London street life she portrays: the children of poverty, the sellers of foodstuffs, the laborers. Building one subplot upon another, she moves from scene to scene with the ease of a skilled dramatist, creating entanglements that, like a cat's cradle, all come neatly together at the end of the tale. Satisfying. Dudley B. Carlson, Princeton Public Library, N.J.

School Library Journal