Mary Pope Osborne’s Ghost Town at Sundown is a Wild West adventure for 7 year olds that starts with a piano playing itself.<\/p>\n
Jack and Annie follow a long-legged rabbit into the Frog Creek woods and find Morgan le Fay waiting up in the magic tree house. She gives them a book about the Old West and a riddle written on a scroll.<\/p>\n
Then the tree house spins. They land on a hot, dry prairie outside a place called Rattlesnake Flats. One unpaved street. A few sagging buildings. A patch of ground with tombstones on it.<\/p>\n
A rattlesnake sends them running into the town. Then a sad tune drifts out of the hotel. The piano keys are going up and down and nobody is sitting at them.<\/p>\n
Jack has a very sensible explanation for that. It lasts until Annie points out that the Wild West did not have electricity.<\/p>\n
Next, three riders come through with a herd of stolen horses. Jack and Annie hide in barrels and listen. The rustlers have taken a red mare and left her colt behind because he could not keep up.<\/p>\n
That is the moment the riddle stops mattering. Annie is not going to leave a lost colt out on a prairie at dusk, and Jack knows he will not change her mind.<\/p>\n
Help turns up as a mustang herder called Slim, who says hello by pointing a six-shooter and calling them the smallest horse thieves he has ever come across. He hands out nicknames. Annie is Smiley. Jack is Shorty, which Jack does not enjoy one bit.<\/p>\n
The real pleasure of reading it is Jack. He shakes out his cowboy boots in case of scorpions. He stops to look up the correct way to treat a horse while his sister is already sitting on one. When Slim asks whether anyone has questions, Jack thinks, yup, about a million. You get his running commentary the whole way through.<\/p>\n
There are guns in this one, though, and the men holding them steal horses for a living. The last stretch is a night rescue with real danger in it. Nobody is hurt in front of you, but a child who gets wound up about an animal in trouble will stay wound up about that colt for a good few chapters. If yours likes being a bit scared and then very relieved, it is pitched about right.<\/p>\n
It is short, too, which suits a reader still building up to longer chapter books.<\/p>\n
Jack and Annie do talk about this trip again later on. If the horses are the part that lands, Stallion by Starlight puts a wild black one in their way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mary Pope Osborne’s Ghost Town at Sundown is a Wild West adventure for 7 year olds that starts with a piano playing itself. Jack and Annie follow a long-legged rabbit into the Frog Creek woods and find Morgan le Fay waiting up in the magic tree house. She gives them a book about the Old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11185,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":8707,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Stallion by Starlight","lr_seo_hook":"A ghost town, a stolen mare and a colt who could not keep up."},"book_tag":[1045],"age_group":[19],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[691],"class_list":["post-7506","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-adventure-books","age_group-books-for-7-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-mary-pope-osborne"],"yoast_title":"Ghost Town at Sundown by Mary Pope Osborne | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A ghost town, a stolen mare and a colt who could not keep up. For ages 7+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n