Not a good start, you would think, but this is a feel-good Scholastic after school special intended for little girls: in the beginning, Sally does mope about feeling sorry for herself but good things begin happening–Aunt Sarah turns out to be arthritic rather than genuinely cross, Shadow warms up to Sally once he gets used to little girls not to mention a girl only slightly younger than Sally living in one of the apartment buildings abutting the mansion’s yard who likes Aunt Sarah’s gingerbread cookies as much as Sally herself.
Aunt Sarah lives alone in a spooky old rambling Victorian farmhouse, surrounded by apartment buildings encroaching on the property such that only a remnant of the house’s once magnificent grounds remains. The book’s short and simple: Sally, nine, is taken (while her parents are traveling) to live with her grumpy old aunt, Sarah, who has a grumpy old cat, Shadow 1. I’d never heard of this particular book before–I found a copy of it in one of the local library’s sale bins and picked it up on a whim and for a dime because I recognized the illustrator (and have a soft spot in my heart for Scholastic books)–but it’s exactly the sort of thing I would have loved when I was 7 or 8. I must sheepishly concede that Magic Elizabeth is no literary marvel or recent Hot New Cool Fiction, but rather a typical comfort read for me and possibly an ideal read for daydreamy little girls whose reading abilities have outstripped their maturity, as there’s nothing particularly hurtful in it.
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