The Show To End All Shows
Book 2 Of Master Melville's Medicine Show
- Publisher
- Penguin Group Canada
- Initial publish date
- Feb 2014
- Category
- General
- Recommended Age
- 8 to 12
- Recommended Grade
- 3 to 7
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780670065868
- Publish Date
- Feb 2014
- List Price
- $18
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
Sullivan is still trapped with the Melville’s Medicine Show, along with Frederick, Esmeralda and Clarence, travelling around the country. But his family has not given up hope. His parents got in touch with the parents of the other children, and his sister, Jinny, is determined to get back on the road with Manny in order to pick up the trail of the mysterious medicine show. And they are helped by a very real clue: a decades-old newspaper article about a travelling medicine show that mysteriously bears the same name …
Back at the show, the Melvilles are becoming unhappy with the children’s performances. Sullivan drops some eggs, and worse, Clarence is finding it a tighter and tighter squeeze inside the “automaton,” the chess-playing Napoleon. They are soon going to need a new child to join the show, and the Melvilles know just the right one. Despite the children’s best efforts to prevent another child from being kidnapped, a new girl joins the show.
But the Melvilles may have underestimated the new girl, whose feisty nature is inspirational to Sullivan. The Melvilles certainly seem preoccupied with something—at every new site, Master Melville can be seen carefully examining the grounds. With their families ever closer, the children of the travelling medicine show band together to solve the mystery of who the Melvilles really are and just what they are looking for.
About the author
Cary Fagan is the author of eight previous novels and five books of short stories, including The Student, Great Adventures for the Faint of Heart, and A Bird's Eye. He has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Writers' Trust Fiction Award, the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, and has won the Toronto Book Award and the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction. He is also an acclaimed writer of books for children, having won the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, the IODE Jean Throop Book Award, a Mr. Christie Silver Medal, the Joan Betty Stuchner—Oy Vey!—Funniest Children's Book Award, and the Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People. Fagan's work has been translated into French, Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Chinese, Korean and Persian. He still lives in his hometown of Toronto.
