Hornet stepped up to the door and hissed through it. 'Come on, Riccio, you know we never remember the stupid password,' Prosper grumbled angrily. Finally, the door opened just a crack and a suspicious voice asked: 'Password?' Bo stepped impatiently from one foot to the other. This was their sign, but it still took quite a while until something happened. He waited for a moment and then pulled it once more. Next to the door was a cord and Prosper gave it two strong tugs. Now it was the entrance to a hiding place that only six children knew anything about. The door had once been one of the cinema's emergency exits. Someone had painted 'Vietato Ingresso' in clumsy letters on it – No Entry. Hornet, Prosper, and Bo, however, only followed it as far as a metal door set in the windowless wall to their right.

It led to a canal, like many of Venice's alleys and passages. (Sept.A water rat scuttled away as the children felt their way along the narrow passage. The Venetian setting is ripe for mystery-and the city's alleys and canals ratchet up the suspense in the chase scenes. But between kindhearted Victor and his collection of fake beards, the Thief Lord in his mask and high-heeled boots, and a rascally street kid who loves to steal, Prosper's new world abounds with colorful characters. There are a lot of story lines to follow, and the pacing is sometimes off (readers may feel that Funke spends too little time on what happens when the children find the carousel, and too much on the ruse they pull on Prosper's aunt). They live in an abandoned movie theater with several other street children under the care of the Thief Lord, a cocky youth who claims to rob 'the city's most elegant houses.' A mysterious man hires the Thief Lord to steal a wooden wing, which the kids later learn has broken off a long-lost merry-go-round said to make 'adults out of children and children out of adults,' but the plan alters when Victor, the detective Aunt Esther hired to track the brothers, discovers their camp and reveals that the Thief Lord is actually from a wealthy family. After their mother dies, 12-year-old Prosper and his brother, Bo, five, flee from Hamburg to Venice (an awful aunt plans to adopt only Bo). Wacky characters bring energy to this translation of an entertaining German novel about thieving children, a disguise-obsessed detective and a magical merry-go-round.

The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke