"You get to choose. Either you poke a hold in the nest with your finger and get stung all over, or else you run away as fast as you can." -From the book 14-year-old Susanna lives in a village where old grudges and long-standing resentments are stifling, making even the neighbor's barking dogs a major crisis. Susanna is stuck in the middle, baffled by her beautiful, heartbroken mother's betrayal of a lifelong friend. When a handsome traveling puppeteer comes to town, Susanna is inspired to stir up the hornets in her town's nest of troubles.

 

 

This book is aimed at children at US 6th grade+.

This book has been graded for interest at 12 years.

There are 144 pages in this book.

It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.

This book was published in 2000 by Front Street Inc .

Annie M. G. Schmidt (1911-95) was regarded as the Queen of Dutch Children's Literature and her books have been an essential part of every Dutch childhood for the last fifty years. She trained as a librarian but burst onto the literary scene when the newspaper she was working for discovered her gift for children's verse. Having won numerous awards during her lifetime, including the1989 Hans Christian Andersen Award, Schmidt is now included in the Canon of Dutch History taught to all Dutch schoolchildren, alongside Spinoza, Anne Frank and Vincent van Gogh. David Colmer has won several international awards for his translations of Dutch and Flemish novels, poetry and children's books. He has translated much of Annie M. G. Schmidt's work.