From the dust jacket:
This is the story of Marc (who was 8) and Ninette (who was 9), and it happened just a little while ago in Beauvoir, a village on the very edge of a wide blue lake between France and Switzerland. There were many villages on both sides of this lake and white steamboats crossed back and forth between them.
Marc's house was a funny crooked gray house with pink flowers growing on its roof and out of the cracks in its walls. His grandfather was the best of all the fishermen in the village, and his grandmother mended the nets out in front of the house so she could watch the comings and goings of the neighbors.
Ninette lived with her father, the Baron of Beauvoir, and her older sister Colette in an ancient gray castle right in the middle of the village. The castle was really too big for them and the Baron didn't have very much money any more so they lived in three of its rooms and grew their own vegetables in the garden.
Everything was peaceful in Beauvoir until two things happened–there was to be a banquet for Colette's wedding and on the very same day Marc's grandfather was to have a birthday. When the children planned two surprises for these events they found themselves in a very complicated situation. Their adventures in getting out of this situation and the double surprise at the end will delight all readers as much as it did the parties involved,
Elisabeth Benson Booz has given a delightful, old world flavor to a series of amusing little incidents that are the essence of the tiny French fishing village, and her own captivating and unusual illustrations give the story an enchanting fairy tale quality.
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