New Releases by Sid Fleischman

***A shout comes echoing up the stairway. "Fetch the whipping boy!"*** **A young orphan named Jemmy rouses from his sleep.** "Ain't I already been whipped twice today? Gaw! What's the prince done now?" It was forbidden to spank, thrash, or whack the heir to the throne. **Jemmy had been plucked from the streets to serve as whipping boy to the arrogant and spiteful Prince Brat.** Dreaming of running away, Jemmy finds himself trapped in Prince Brat's own dream at once brash and perilous. ***In this briskly told tale of high adventure, taut with suspense and rich with colorful characters, the whipping boy and Prince Brat must at last confront each other.*** Award-winning author Sid Fleischman again blends the broadly comic with the deeply compassionate in this memorable novel.

When his older sister disappears, twelve-year-old Buddy Stebbins follows her back in time and finds himself aboard a seventeenth-century pirate ship captained by a distant relative.

A biography of the magician, ghost chaser, aviator, and king of escape artists whose amazing feats are remembered long after his death in 1926. Profiling his early years, personal life, and great accomplishments in show business, the story of the famous magician, Harry Houdini, comes to life through a review of his greatest tricks and most amazing feats, complete with index, photos, and author's notes.

See him? That little tramp twitching a postage stamp of a mustache, politely lifting his bowler hat, and leaning on a bamboo cane with the confidence of a gentleman? A slapstick comedian, he blazed forth as the brightest movie star in the Hollywood heavens.

Everyone knew Charlie—Charlie Chaplin.

When he was five years old he was pulled onstage for the first time, and he didn't step off again for almost three-quarters of a century. Escaping the London slums of his tragic childhood, he took Hollywood like a conquistador with a Cockney accent. With his gift for pantomime in films that had not yet acquired vocal cords, he was soon rubbing elbows with royalty and dining on gold plates in his own Beverly Hills mansion. He was the most famous man on earth—and he was regarded as the funniest.

Still is. . . . He comes to life in these pages. It's an astonishing rags-to-riches saga of an irrepressible kid whose childhood was dealt from the bottom of the deck. Abundantly illustrated.