THE CHANGELING

However palpable, Zilpha Snyder's world is always at an intriguing remove from reality; and when, as in The Egypt Game, her characters plunge intensely into make-believe, there are few girls who will not plummet after. Although—or perhaps because—divested of its strange, prickling nimbus, this becomes the transformation of fat, seven-year-old Marty Mouse, the nonentity in a self-assured, preoccupied household, into beautiful blonde Martha Abbott, the Sophomore "who's in all the school plays." Meanwhile Ivy Carson, self-proclaimed changeling, can't escape the family reputation for shiftlessness and worse. Their affinity is most firmly forged in play-acting the Tree People, an evasion for Ivy but a catharsis for Martha who masters the meanest role. Repeatedly the Carsons leave under a cloud only to return, and increasingly Martha is torn between loyalty to Ivy and the past, and the social pressures/ lures of the present. In eighth grade Ivy would pledge them not to grow up—to "Know all the Questions, but not the Answers—Look for the Different, instead of the Same—Never Walk when there's room for Running—Don't do anything that can't be a Game." But when she beats out contemptuous Kelly Peters for the lead dancer's role in the school play, the sky falls: Kelly accuses Ivy and Martha of vandalism and only brother Tom Abbott's disclosure that he was in the raid led by a 'respectable' dope-pushing classmate clears them. It is the turning point for Martha, the Abbotts becoming more attentive, less complacent, and the vanishing point for Ivy—a subsequent letter tells that she's in New York studying dancing; it is also the weakest point in the book. But once magicked, the reader is not to be dislodged by a topical intrusion or a Cinderella (re)version.