Children's Author Christine Norris

                ISBN: 1-885093-44-6
             LBF Books, December 2005
             187 pages
             $14.95

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 When Ivy Peterson sees the most extraordinary thing in her own backyard- a fairy - she dismisses it as another daydream, but she quickly realizes that it was, in fact, the real thing. She goes in search of the mythical creature, and accidentally falls into Zandria, a magical world that exists just outside her own. Unfortunately, she finds that she's trapped there. Someone has stolen the Talisman, a magical amulet that controls the five gates between Zandria and her own world. Ivy and her new friends, the wizard Arden, his young apprentice Connor, and a pair of fairies, set off on a quest to reclaim the Talisman of Zandria.

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 Chapter 1

 Ivy

Ivy Peterson was not ordinary. Nor was she extraordinary or unusual. Ivy Peterson was Less-than-Ordinary. At least she thought she was. With her mouse brown hair, plain brown eyes, and average height, she knew that she absolutely could not be picked out of a crowd of other eleven year olds. Even the small freckles sprinkled across her nose were Less-than-Ordinary. Ivy was so very Less-than-Ordinary that she sometimes felt invisible.

“When was the Declaration of Independence signed?” asked Miss Litvack, Ivy’s history teacher. Two students raised their hands, but Miss Litvack appeared not to see the brown haired girl in the center of the room.

“Jodi,” the teacher said, and pointed to a blonde girl in the back of the class. Ivy put her hand down slowly. Her teachers almost never called on her, even when she raised her hand, which was almost never even though she usually knew the answer. In addition to being Less-than-Ordinary, she was also Not-Very-Brave. This proved to be a bigger problem than being Less-than-Ordinary, because it prevented her from making friends. She didn’t know where to begin a conversation with any of the children in her school. Certainly she was not brave enough to actually approach someone she hardly knew and start talking to them.

Her parents, although they loved her very much, were often too busy to notice her or what she was doing, making her feel even more Less-than-Ordinary.

She wished they would spend more time with her, wished that they would give her more attention. She wished for it more than she did friends. But they were important people with important things to do.

Ivy was a good child, a sensible child, and a smart child. She was a Less-than-Ordinary and Not-Very-Brave child. She never dreamed that something Very Extraordinary or Completely Unusual could ever happen to her.

* * *

The sun shone brightly overhead and there was a slight chill in the October air. The leaves on the trees were painted in bright orange, yellow and red, making it look as if they were on fire. Ivy’s street, and in fact her own yard, was filled with these trees, and the ground was littered with their leaves.

Piles of leaves dotted the yard where her father had raked them yesterday. Ivy threw herself into the largest one and covered herself completely, lost in her own little world. It was one of her favorite things to do. She knew her father would be angry when he got home and saw her there, because Ivy always managed to scatter the pile all over the place.

While she lay there thinking – actually worrying about the next math test – she heard something strange. She popped her head out of the pile and looked around. She listened very carefully. After a moment, she heard the noise again. It was like a small bell ringing, but not quite, and it sounded close. The sound came from the woods that edged her backyard. Ivy stood up as quietly as possible, brushed the leaves off of her jeans, and tiptoed toward the woods. She stopped right at the edge; she heard it again, and thought that maybe her neighbors’ cat, Squiggles, had gotten loose again and she was hearing the bell on his collar.

A small, bright light darted in between the nearby trees. Ivy stepped closer, almost onto the path that led into the deeper, thicker part of the forest. She stood statue-still; only her eyes moved. She looked in every direction, trying to see where the light had come from. It came back into her field of view, moving fast. Then the small, white-blue light darted around her and stopped. It floated three feet from the ground and two feet in front of her. The light moved closer and bobbed up to her eye level. Ivy gasped.

The light surrounded a little person, about ten inches tall. It was just like Ivy - two arms, two legs, and a head. Blonde hair fell to its shoulders, and a tunic of royal blue went to its knees. Stranger than its size, the little person had wings that fluttered madly to keep it aloft. The odd bell-like sound she had heard came from those wings. The creature looked at her curiously.

Fascinated, Ivy slowly reached her hand up to touch the tiny creature.

Before she could get near it, it shot off down the path and out of sight.

Ivy was just about to chase after it when her mother called. “Ivy, time for supper. Come and wash up, please.”

Ivy looked back into the woods, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary. With a sigh, she ran up to the house and in the back door.

“What were you doing back there?” Ivy’s mother asked when she reached the back steps.

“Uh, nothing.” Ivy didn’t think her mother would believe her even if she told her.

“Well, come inside now, honey. Your father is going to be pretty peeved when he sees what you’ve done to that leaf pile.”