The Lost Girl touches on a number of interesting methods used by fortune tellers and serves as an introduction to parapsychology.
She stared hard, not sure whether the future would appear at the top or the bottom of the bowl. But she knew it had to work. Her vision blurred a few times, but she never took her eyes off the water. That mysterious feeling filled her, and seemed to send electricity through her veins. Then it happened. An image rose to the top of the bowl... (The Lost Girl, p. 9)
The Lost Girl (Llewellyn Pub., 2002, ISBN 0-7387-0253-6), first book in the Fortune Tellers Club series by Dotti Enderle, is written for girls age 9 to 12. In this series, girls will be introduced to a number of fun fortune telling methods, such as tarot cards and water scrying, as well as the silly methods we all remember from our childhood: the Magic 8-Ball and a plastic fish that curls up in your hand.
In The Lost Girl, we meet Gena, Juniper, and Anne. These three girls make up the Fortune Tellers Club, and their goal is to solve mysteries and to help each other in times of need.
The book opens with Juniper asking the ouija board how to solve one of their greatest mysteries of the moment: Where did Gena lose her retainer? After failing to get useful information from the ouija board about Gena's dental appliance, the girls decided to try a different form of divination: water scrying.
Gazing down into a bowl of water, Juniper finds herself being drawn into the mist. And then a face appears to her. It's the pale and haunting face of a young girl.
Unable to get the image of the girl out of her mind, Juniper continues to help Gena search for the missing retainer. The next day, the girls ride their bikes, stopping at local stores to see if Gena left her retainer at any of the stores. On their way back from an unsuccessful trip, Juniper looks up at the poster-lined trees and sees the girl's face. The same face she had seen in the water. It was a missing person poster.
Dotti Enderle knows how to tell a story and how to draw her audience in to the plot. The Lost Girl is a page-turner and is the perfect gift to any girl who loves mysteries, adventures, as well as a faint touch of magic.
