By Colorado Kids Advisory Board member Amanda Roper

Title: The Alley
Author: Eleanor Estes
Illustrator: Edward Ardizzone
Publisher: Harcourt Books
Number of Pages: 283

"The Alley" was another wonderful book by Eleanor Estes. It is about a girl named Connie Ives, her family, Connie's best friend named Billy Maloon, and the kids from the alley.

Connie's house gets robbed by "the bullet head man" and his gang. But when the police come, Connie's mom realizes that the police are leaving with a little something extra, her diamond ring!

Billy knows that he is going to find out everything that happened, so he starts by casing the clues. He finds out that someone else might get robbed when Billy and the other alley kids saw "the bullet head man" ask Bully Vardeer, an artist, "Does this dog bite?" Those were the same words that "the bullet head man" had asked Connie and her mom when they were taking their dog Wags on a walk.

After a few weeks, Connie started giving piano lessons to some kids in the alley. While she had her recital, another person got robbed, Bully Vardeer.

Billy did not go to the recital because he was sick. But after the recital, Connie went over to tell Billy that Bully Vardeer was robbed. When she gets to Billy's house, she looked in Billy's window and saw that he was not there. She knew that he went to climb the tree (that overlooks the alley) to watch for the burglars. When she found him, she climbed up in the tree with him. She found out that Billy had taken photos of the thieves, and sure enough there was a photo of "the bullet head man" taking Bully's new typewriter.

If you want to find out this thrilling ending, you'll have to read "The Alley", by Eleanor Estes.

I recommend this book for ages 9-14, for people who like adventure and mystery, and for people who have read other Eleanor Estes books. (March, 2004)