The Peddler’s Road by Matthew Cody

This is a pretty great book. It’s filled with magic and terror. This story starts with a girl named Max. She has pink hair. Max and her disabled brother, Carter, are in Hamelin, Germany with their dad because of his work. Max would rather be back in New York with their mom. All the people in Hamelin seem to have an obsession with the the fairytale, The Pied Piper. One day when Max and Carter are with their housekeeper Ms. Amsel, rats come out of the air vents. Hundreds of thousands of rats. When the exterminator comes, he says there couldn’t possibly have been that many. Then something happens. Max and Carter just mysteriously wake up in a city full of children. There aren’t any adults. None. A boy named Lukas tells them that they are in New Hamelin. He says that the children in New Hamelin are there because the Pied Piper took them there seven hundred years ago, and left them. The children never aged though. They are all still the same age as when the Piper took them. Lukas thinks that Carter is the last son of Hamelin from the prophecy, Only when the last son of Hamelin appears and the Black Tower found will the Piper’s prison open and the children return safe and sound. He convinces Carter that they need to find the Black Tower. Max forbids it. She doesn’t want her little brother going on a dangerous quest. After much arguing Max agrees. She will come with them and let Carter come on one condition-she gets a spear. Lukas agrees. Then the girl in charge of the village, Emilie, says she’s coming too. They start this quest, but can they finish it? Not only that, can they finish it alive?