“One day, a mysterious stranger arrives at the widow Gateau’s boardinghouse—a sad-faced stranger who keeps to himself. Mirette, the widow’s daughter, discovers him crossing the courtyard on air and begs him to show her how he does it.
Mirette, on the other hand, is unaware that the stranger was once the Great Bellini—master wire-walker. Or that a terrifying fear has paralyzed Bellini. And it is she who must instill courage in him once more.
Emily Arnold McCully’s sweeping watercolor paintings transport the reader over nineteenth-century Paris’ rooftops and into an elegant, beautiful world of acrobats, jugglers, mimes, actors, and one gallant, resourceful little girl.”
