[1] Opening in the fictitious village of Midmeddlecum, evidently in contemporary rural England, it features two girls whose father is absent during a war.

[2] Linklater won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognizing the year's best children's book by a British subject.

And so it proves: before long the girls are drinking a potion provided by the local witch and turning into kangaroos, getting stuck in the zoo, and staging an escape along with their new friends, a golden puma and a silver falcon.

Their appetite for naughtiness and cleverness whetted, Dinah and Dorinda turn their attention to freeing their dancing master, Casimir Corvo, from jail.

The two girls, together with their puma friend and their beloved dancing teacher, smuggle themselves from England to Bombardy in a room made of furniture hidden inside a huge removal van and stage a dramatic rescue.