• Age: 9 to 12
• Grade: 4 to 7

A mystery spans decades at the Rehearsal Club in this story of sisterhood, friendship and following your dreams under marquee lights.

Twelve-year-old Pal Gallagher is a newly minted New Yorker who loves to make people laugh and is hoping to find kindred spirits in her new city. Her older sister, Naomi, lives at the Rehearsal Club, a historic boarding house for aspiring actresses. Pal quickly gets swept up in the glamor and high-stakes of the theater world, and is drawn into a decades-old mystery about Posy, a boarder who was kicked out of the Club for reasons unknown.

In 1954, Olive feels like she is working harder than anyone to make it to Broadway — along with the forty-four other young women who live at the Rehearsal Club. In comparison, her carefree friend Posy is making it look easy. Tensions rise when the two audition for the same part, kicking off a series of events that lead to Posy’s departure.

What really happened all those years ago? The truth involves a Broadway play called The Weekend House, a necklace and a secret that Olive has kept all these years — until Pal and her new friends start digging into the past. What they learn could change the very fate of the Rehearsal Club itself.

Key Text Features

chapters

dialogue

author’s note

Correlates to the Common Core States Standards in English Language Arts:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.3

Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.3

Describe how a particular story's or drama's plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.6

Explain how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text.

KATE FODOR is a writer and producer who has worked on the Emmy- and Golden Globe Award–winning series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. She has also written for Netflix’s Living with Yourself and HBO’s Julia. As a playwright, she has been a Guggenheim fellow and has received the Kennedy Center's Roger L. Stevens Award, the National Theater Conference's Stavis Award, and a Joseph Jefferson Citation. Her play RX was a New York Times Critic’s Pick. Kate lives in New York City.

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LAURIE PETROU is an award-winning and internationally published author of young-adult fiction, short stories and commercial literary novels. Her books have twice been on the Globe and Mail Top 100 Books of the Year, among other top book lists. Her novel Stargazer was praised by The Push author Ashley Audrain, who called it "A delicious read!” Laurie is an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University where she is a Dean's Teaching Award winner. She lives in Niagara, Ontario.

Laurie Petrou's profile page