By Colorado Kids Advisory Board member Andrea Elliott

Title: The Blue Door
Author: Ann Rinaldi
Illustrator: (none)
Publisher: Scholastic
Number of Pages: 272

After getting some information about the life of this story's main character, mostly about her family and the plantation on which she lives, we find that she is going on a trip to Massachusetts to visit her great-grandfather. This is so her father can sell his cotton to the New England mill owned by the great-grandfather at a higher price than anyone local would have paid. Amanda (the main character) travels with the Ingrahams to a riverboat and then on the riverboat with the Rhordans. For complex reasons, Amanda ends up 'trading places' with Clara Rhordan. Then the riverboat catches fire and sinks, and Clara drowns. Since she was in Amanda's clothes at the time, everyone thinks that Clara is alive and Amanda has drowned, though it is really the opposite. Though Amanda saves her bible from the boat, she loses her section of the Chelmsford family quilt to the villain of the story, who keeps it to pretend that he is a Chelmsford. Without this quilt, Amanda is not recognized by the great-grandfather and has to work in the mill he runs. While delivering a bolt of cloth to the woman who works on patterns, Amanda discovers that this woman is actually her aunt Nancy, her grandmother's sister's half-Indian daughter. Amanda gets Nancy to like her and sign the petition she has brought for a shorter work day by offering an idea for a new pattern, and soon they become friends. After Amanda writes a letter to the newspaper about conditions in the mill, her great-grandfather discovers that she is still alive and stops her working in his establishment. But with the man who stole the quilt still looking for her, she'll have a hard time getting back to South Carolina.

This book starts off much faster than A Stitch in Time, but there's still a lot of information in the beginning before the major events start. As with the first book in this trilogy, I recommend it to kids 5th grade and up who enjoy reading historical fiction and can get through the first few chapters. I still can't recommend anything similar though, because this book is different than anything I've read in the past. (March, 2004)