Chance is given a life-sized marionette from the owner of a curiosity shop and discovers he can hear the puppet’s thoughts whenever he touches her strings. Penny has spent years on a shelf watching everything around her, and has hazy memories of a long-ago, different life. After Penny’s strings are cut by a shadowy man who slips into Chance’s bedroom window unseen, Chance uses a spindle he finds, left by the man, to try to reattach them. Instead, he and Penny switch places: He is now in the puppet’s body; Penny is in his. Chance’s older sister, the seemingly always sweet-tempered Constance, realizes Chance is not himself and teams with Penny to find him after the marionette disappears. Constance and Penny (in Chance’s body) stumble into a mystery tied to an evil puppeteer and numerous children who’ve gone missing across decades. An exceptionally satisfying story set in mid–20 th -century New York City offers frissons of excitement and fear and features memorable characters in Chance—a boy both smart and kind; Penny, facing a moral dilemma as she longs to remain human but doesn’t want to sacrifice Chance; and Constance, a girl whose seemingly compliant personality has been a ruse in response to the way girls and young women are seen—and not seen. She is intelligent, courageous, audacious, angry, and determined to get her brother back. (Ages 9–12)

Doll Bones meets Splendors and Glooms as a boy who trades bodies with a wooden marionette. . . .

The Museum of Peculiar Arts holds many oddities--a mechanical heart, a diary bound in its owner's skin . . . and Penny, a child-size marionette who almost looks alive. Fog clouds Penny's memories from before the museum, but she catches glimpses here and there: a stage, deep red curtains, long-fingered hands gripping her strings.

One day, a boy named Chance touches Penny's strings and hears her voice in his head. Penny can listen, and watch, and think?

Now someone else is watching Penny and Chance--a man with a sharp face, a puppeteer who has the tools to change things. A string through a needle. A twist of a spindle. And suddenly Chance is trapped in Penny's marionette body, while Penny is free to run and dance. She knows that finding a way to switch back is the right thing to do. But this body feels so wonderful, so full of life! How can Penny ever return to her puppet shell?