A Visit to a Portrait Gallery  (coming soon)

When Aunt Esther insists that Ezra and Leah accompany her to an art museum (“A little culture never hurt anyone.”), the siblings are prepared for one thing only: boredom. What they don’t expect is to be swept inside a portrait of a little girl named Hilde Marie Celine de Chanceau who lived in France nearly four hundred years ago. But that’s exactly what happens. An astonished Leah and Ezra discover that Hilde's portrait is the doorway to a world behind the painting. Unfortunately, they also discover that Hilde is a spoiled brat who won't stop ordering them around. Plus Hilde is strange. She's never seen a smart phone and thinks "Tik Tok" is the name of a woodpecker. There’s another problem too. Hilde isn’t kosher. She doesn’t even know what kosher is. Ezra and Leah demand to go home. The little girl refuses. She' s lost her Beginner’s  Guide to Magic Spells that includes the spell returning  “guests”  to their proper time zones and locations. But does Hilde turn the house inside out to find the missing book? No. She says she’s too tired. Tomorrow, perhaps. But why would Hilde ever let Leah and Ezra return home? She's been the only child inside her painting for centuries. Finally there are other children. At last she will have friends. All Hilde Marie needs to do is to break it to Ezra and Leah that they can't go home because they are home.

 ©Lucy A. Greenburg 2023