Starred Review for Publishers Weekly

At once exuberant and poignant, Potter's cunningly crafted first novel can be read on a variety of levels. It starts out like a wacky comedy. Olivia has just moved into a Manhattan apartment with her father, the building's new superintendent, their fourth move in two years ("The problem was that George, who was the absolute nicest man in the entire United States, and possibly Canada too, was a terrible superintendent"). Locked out of her apartment one afternoon, the 12-year-old makes astonishing discoveries. The elderly woman down the hall has an apartment made entirely of glass, and she spies on the residents below through her transparent floor. Another woman wears a "shawl" made of live lizards and has, apparently, escaped from pirates, lived on a desert island and is mistaken for a long-missing, Amelia Earhart–type aviator. Olivia also gets dragged to a séance, and she makes friends with a boy whose mother—busy milking the family goat while the boy's 10 siblings play wildly—doesn't quite recognize his name. But just when the tales-within-tales seem incontrovertibly outlandish, Potter picks up the clues she has planted about Olivia's own past and uses the fantasy elements of her story to explore the trouble Olivia has in confronting her losses. Achieving a delicate balance between fantasy and stark reality, the author leaves it to readers to form their own interpretations of Olivia's experiences. A memorable debut. Ages 8-12. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(June)

ALA Booklist (Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 CDT 2003)

Readers who think they are getting a story about a lonely girl living with her sweet but inept father, a super in a New York high-rise, will be partially right. But as soon as Olivia opens the doors of several apartments, she (and readers), enter full-blown fantasy worlds, where occupants live in rooms of glass or a tropical forest; one resident wears a lizard boa and another is a ghost. The apartments and the characters have stories of their own, and Potter manages to draw all the parts together into a cohesive whole that speaks to Olivia's abandonment issues (her mother has left; her brother is dead) and to the power of her imagination. There is so much going on here the story may be difficult for some children to handle; less would have been much more. But Potter, a first-time novelist, has a delightful way with words, and she offers picture-perfect descriptions of life in Olivia's curious building. The gray-wash pictures are also fun, focusing on the appealing Olivia.

Horn Book (Thu Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 2004)

This compelling, unsettling novel begins when twelve-year-old Olivia realizes she has lost her keys. A boy lets her into her apartment building, where she visits several different apartments, each strange and threatening in its own way. Unlike her literary predecessor, Carroll's Alice, Olivia take a metaphorical journey through grief over a death in her family; as she faces that truth, she helps the boy accept an equally difficult one.

Kirkus Reviews

Olivia's father has just become the superintendent of a New York City apartment building filled with particularly strange people. One woman has a glass floor that provides a perfect view of the apartment below. There is also an inept fortune-teller, a ghostly boy, and a particular nasty pair living in a recreated rainforest. Has Olivia really stumbled on an alternate world or is it all the invention of a desperately lonely child? Potter does not establish that sense of peculiar logic that is necessary to a successful fantasy. Here the events and characters are dependent on coincidence and manipulation. It succeeds somewhat better as Olivia's story, but any true understanding of her pain is lost in the too-facile denouement. Reynolds's computer-generated comic-bookstyle drawings are intrusive and add nothing to the plot or mood. Disappointing. (Fiction. 10-12)

School Library Journal

Gr 3-6-After losing a number of jobs due to his ineptitude, Olivia Kidney's father has landed yet another position as a superintendent in a New York City apartment building. That means that Olivia is, once again, the new kid. Losing her key one day, she meets the first of a number of the building's unusual residents, who turns out to be a ghost. Like Alice in Wonderland down the rabbit hole, as she travels from floor to floor, the 12-year-old's experiences range from strange to surreal. Before the day is over, she has met two mean girls about her age, an old woman whose entire apartment is made of glass, and a budding psychic named Alice. She invites Olivia to come back later that evening to meet Madame Brenda, whose specialty is conducting s ances. One by one, the residents invite the child into their homes and tell her their stories. Their tales make up this story of a lonely girl who wants desperately to believe that her older brother, who recently died of cancer, can talk to her from the grave. Potter has written a first-rate novel to be enjoyed on many levels. Its plot is so tightly woven that it's difficult to separate the mystical from the fantastical. Occasional full-page illustrations add another dimension to this narrative, which is wonderful medicine for the lonely. An imaginative, original offering with a poignant and satisfying ending that may bring a tear or two.-Kit Vaughan, Chesterfield County Public Schools, VA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.